Rasa as open source alternative to Google Dialogflow - Migration Guide

You are viewing documentation for our open source project which is maintained by the community. If you want to get started building assistants with Rasa please check out our latest documentation here.

Let's get started with migrating your application from Dialogflow to Rasa (you can find a more detailed tutorial here):

Step 1: Export your data from Dialogflow

Navigate to your agent's settings by clicking the gear icon.

Selecting settings

Click on the 'Export and Import' tab and click on the 'Export as ZIP' button.

Selecting Export and Import

This will download a file with a .zip extension. Unzip this file to create a folder.

Step 2: Create a Rasa Project

To create a Rasa project, run:

rasa init

This will create a directory called data. Remove the files in this directory, and move your unzipped folder into this directory.

rm -r data/*

mv testagent data/

Step 3: Train your NLU model

To train a model using your Dialogflow data, run:

rasa train nlu

Step 4: Test your NLU model

Let's see how your NLU model will interpret some test messages. To start a testing session, run:

rasa shell nlu

This will prompt your for input. Type a test message and press 'Enter'. The output of your NLU model will be printed to the screen. You can keep entering messages and test as many as you like. Press 'control + C' to quit.

Step 5: Start a Server with your NLU Model

To start a server with your NLU model, run:

rasa run --enable-api

This will start a server listening on port 5005.

To send a request to the server, run:

curl 'localhost:5005/model/parse?emulation_mode=dialogflow' -d '{"text": "hello"}'

The emulation_mode parameter tells Rasa that you want your JSON response to have the same format as you would get from the Dialogflow sessions.detectIntent endpoint (the format is described here). You can also leave it out to get the result in the usual Rasa format.

Terminology:

The words intent, entity, and utterance have the same meaning in Rasa as they do in Dialogflow. In Dialogflow, there is a concept called Fulfillment. In Rasa we call this a Custom Action.

Join the Rasa Community Forum and let us know how your migration went!