Actions on Google Fulfillment Response - php

Question

When you receive a request, your fulfillment must return a response
I have a HTTPS endpoint which receives commands sent thru the google assistant(My Fulfilment URL). But i want to return a text to the user for every request made
Eg:
USER REQUEST : "Tell, 'app name' to do blah blah"
ASSISTANT RESPONSE : "Okay, sure"
As documented in this article --> https://developers.google.com/actions/components/fulfillment (RESPONSE FORMAT) , I have coded the json file according to the format said in the above link
But it says your fulfillment must return a response
RESPONSE.JSON
"finalResponse": {
"richResponse": {
"items": [
{
"simpleResponse": {
"textToSpeech": "sure thing",
"displayText": "Sure, thing!"
}
]
}
}
In my Fulfilment end point i did the above.
fulfilment.php
$file = [
"expectUserResponse" => false,
"finalResponse" => [
"richResponse" => [
"items" => [
[
"simpleResponse" => [
"textToSpeech" => "Sure thing!",
"displayText" => "Sure, thing?"
]
]
]
]
]
];
echo json_encode($file);
header('Content-Type: application/json');
How do i return this file in php back to google assistant?
I am using PHP :)

Answer 1

For starters - that isn't valid JSON. Valid JSON would look something like this:
{
"finalResponse": {
"richResponse": {
"items": [{
"simpleResponse": {
"textToSpeech": "sure thing",
"displayText": "Sure, thing!"
}
}]
}
}
}
Notice the opening and closing brackets to designate that this is a JSON object. What you're sending is a string that has been encoded as a JSON string. Using PHP, the easiest way to create valid JSON is to use json_encode and pass it a nested associative array. So something like this would generate it.
<?php
header('Content-Type: application/json');
$a = [
"finalResponse" => [
"richResponse" => [
"items" => [
[
"simpleResponse" => [
"textToSpeech" => "Sure thing!",
"displayText" => "Sure, thing?"
]
]
]
]
]
];
echo json_encode($a);
Note that the header() must come before anything, even a blank line, has been sent.
However... that might not be your only problem.
This doesn't look like it has all the fields that you should reply. If you're only sending a finalResponse, then you probably also need to set expectUserResponse to false.
(And are you sure that you want to end the conversation every time?)