App Overview

App Architecture

Apps are the most complex of the two main pieces of the SAMI framework, but it is still fairly simple, with lots of power for apps that may have need of them. Apps all should follow the instructions here in order to make sure that the app can be saved and loaded from a configuration file.

An app must do four things in order to fully function as an app:

• The app must identify itself as an app, hooking together all of the pieces needed for the app to function.

• The app must handle a conversation, or a set of inputs and outputs between the user and the app. This is where the main functionality for your app will exist.

• The app must define a set of grammars to indicate what the app can understand, both inside the context of one of its conversations, as well as outside the context of any conversation.

• Finally, the app must supply these grammars to the framework, so that it can be loaded properly.

We will be going over each of these four parts individually in the next pages.

Example App

As we are going through these next few pages, we are going to use an example app as a way to make the lessons concrete. The example app is a fairly easy app that comes with SAMI, called the EchoApp. This app might hear something to the effect of "SAMI, can you say hello?", and it will respond "Hello".

List of Topics Covered

Declare the App to the Framework
Handle a Conversation
Define the Grammars
Adding the Grammars