CODEWITHSUNDEEP
botframework
F. Schwarz
F. Schwarz

Reputation: 13

Botframework Dialog migration v3 to v4

currently I'm trying to migrate my v3 bot to v4 and I'm a little stuck how to migrate the v3 IDialog. What is the equivalent in v4 and how to use them? Also, how can I do an Activity forwarding in v4? In v3 this would have been something like await context.Forward(…)?

Many Thanks & Best Regards Fabian

Upvotes: 1

Views: 953

Answers (1)

Eric Dahlvang
Eric Dahlvang

Reputation: 8292

A good place to start when converting a V3 dialog to V4 involves changing:

IDialog -> Dialog or ComponentDialog (depending)

StartAsyc -> BeginDialogAsync

MessageReceivedAsync -> ContinueDialogAsync

IDialogContext -> DialogContext

The Microsoft Bot Builder V3 .net sdk used AutoFac extensively, and dialog stack was generally more invisible to developers than it is in Bot Builder V4. V3 developers use .Call and .Forward to push dialogs onto the stack, and .EndDialog to pop them. In V3, fields on dialogs are automatically serialized/deserialized and scoped to PrivateConversationData. There was no need to configure dialog state specifically, the sdk added this for every bot and assumed the developer had registered a valid IBotDataStore<BotData> implementation with autofac. Access to the PrivateConversationData, ConversationData and UserData is automatic from IDialogContext.

With Bot Builder V4, dialog stack and state setup is more in the hands of the developer. Within the BeginDialogAsync and ContinueDialogAsync methods, the DialogContext has a BeginDialogAsync method that will start that dialog as a child of the current dialog (similar to .Forward in V3). Resuming after a dialog completes, and utilizing the value returned from the child dialog, is different and involves using DialogTurnResult.Result

DialogContext also has references to the TurnContext and DialogInstance in V4 is the dialogContext.ActiveDialog. From the DialogInstance you can retrieve the DialogState object, which is an IDictionary<string, object> implementation that is json serialized into/out of the store configured in Startup.cs V4 retains the concepts of UserData, ConversationData and PivateConversationData. Setup is a little different, but these data buckets are still scoped as they were:

  • The user state creates a key using the channel ID and from ID. {Activity.ChannelId}/users/{Activity.From.Id}#YourPropertyName

  • The conversation state creates a key using the channel ID and the conversation ID. {Activity.ChannelId}/conversations/{Activity.Conversation.Id}#YourPropertyName

  • The private conversation state creates a key using the channel ID, from ID and the conversation ID. {Activity.ChannelId}/conversations/{Activity.Conversation.Id}/users/{Activity.From.Id}#YourPropertyName

State accessors are configured in Startup's ConfigureServices method.

Documentation assisting developers with this process of V3 to V4 bot and dialog migration is in the works.

Some links for further reading on v4 dialogs and state:

Advanced conversation flow

Gather user input using a dialog prompt

Managing state

Save user and conversation data

Implement custom storage for your bot

Upvotes: 4

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