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aws-samples / aws-lex-web-ui

Sample Amazon Lex chat bot web interface
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ai aws aws-lex bot chat chatbot cloudformation iframe interface lex polly polly-voice ui vue vuejs vuetify vuex web webrtc widget

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Sample Amazon Lex Web Interface

Overview

This is a sample Amazon Lex web interface. It provides a chatbot UI component that can be integrated in your website. The interface allows a user to interact with a Lex bot directly from a browser using text or voice.

It can be used as a full page chatbot UI:

Or embedded into an existing site as a chatbot widget:

Features

Getting Started

The easiest way to test drive the chatbot UI is to deploy it using the AWS CloudFormation templates provided by this project. Once you have launched the CloudFormation stack, you will get a fully working demo site hosted in your account.

These are the currently supported regions. Click a button to launch it in the desired region.

Region Launch CloudFormation Template
Northern Virginia us-east-1
Oregon us-west-2
Ireland eu-west-1
Sydney ap-southeast-2
Singapore ap-southeast-1a
Seoul ap-northeast-2
London eu-west-2
Tokyo ap-northeast-1
Frankfurt eu-central-1
Canada (Central) ca-central-1

By default, the CloudFormation template creates a sample Lex bot and a Amazon Cognito Identity Pool to get you started. It copies the chatbot UI web application to an Amazon S3 bucket including a dynamically created configuration file. The CloudFormation stack outputs links to the demo and related configuration once deployed. See the CloudFormation Deployment section for details.

You can modify the configuration of the deployed demo site to customize the chatbot UI. It can also be further configured to be embedded it on your web site. See the sections below for code samples and a description of the configuration and deployment options.

New regions supporting Lex only support Lex Version 2. A default install of Lex Web Ui with no target Bot specified attempts to install a sample Lex Version 1 Bot and will fail in these new regions. In regions adding Lex support, a Lex Version 2 Bot should be deployed prior to deploying Lex Web UI.

Integrating into your Site and Deploying

In addition to the CloudFormation deployment mentioned above, there are other methods to integrate and deploy this project. Here is a summary of the various methods:

# Method Description Use Case
1 CloudFormation Deployment using the CloudFormation templates provided by this project Fully automated deployment of a hosted web application to an S3 bucket with an optional CI/CD pipeline. By default, it also creates a Cognito Identity Pool and a sample Lex bot Use when you want to have a infrastructure as code approach that automatically builds and configures the chatbot UI resources
2 Use the pre-built libraries from the dist directory of this repo We provide a pre-built version of the chatbot UI component and a loader library that you can use on your web site as a stand alone page or as an embeddable iframe Use when you have an existing site and want to add the chatbot UI to it by simply copying or referencing the library files
3 Use npm to install and use the chatbot UI as a Vue component Enables developers to consume this project as an npm package that provides a Vue component. See the Npm Install and Vue Component Use section for details Use when developing front-end based web applications built using JavaScript and bundled with tools such as webpack

See the Usage and Deployment sections below for details.

Usage

This project provides a set of JavaScript libraries used to dynamically insert the chatbot UI in a web page. The chatbot UI is loaded and customized by including these libraries in your code and calling their functions with configuration parameters.

The chatbot UI can be displayed either as a full page or embedded in an iframe. In this section, you will find a brief overview of the libraries and configuration parameters. It is useful to get familiar with the concepts described in the Libraries and Configuration sections before jumping to the code examples.

Libraries

The list below describes the libraries produced by this project. Pre-built versions of the libraries are found under the dist directory of this repository.

  1. Chatbot UI component. A UI widget packaged as a JavaScript reusable component that can be plugged in a web application. The library is provided by the lex-web-ui.js file under the dist directory. It is bundled from the source under the lex-web-ui directory. This library is geared to be used as an import in a webpack based web application but can also be instantiated directly in a web page provided that you manually load the dependencies and explicitly pass the configuration. See the component's README for details
  2. Loader. A script that adds the chatbot UI component library described in the item above to a web page. It facilitates the configuration and dependency loading process. The library is provided by the lex-web-ui-loader.js file under the dist directory. It is bundled from the sources under the src/lex-web-ui-loader directory. This library is used by adding a few script tags to an HTML page. See the loader README for details

Configuration

The chatbot UI component requires a configuration object pointing to an existing Lex bot and to an Amazon Cognito Identity Pool to create credentials used to authenticate the Lex API calls from the browser. The configuration object is also used to customize its behavior and UI elements of the chatbot UI component.

The CloudFormation deployment method, from this project, help with building a base configuration file. When deploying with it, the base configuration is automatically pointed to the the resources created in the deployment (i.e. Lex and Cognito).

You can override the configuration at run time by passing parameters to the library functions or using various dynamic configuration methods provided by the loader library (e.g. JSON file, events). For details, see the ChatBot UI Configuration Loading section of the loader library documentation and the Configuration and Customization section of the chatbot UI component documentation.

Connect Interactive Messaging

Lex Web UI supports both ListPicker and TimePicker templateTypes and can be sent using the same JSON structure as utilized by Connect.

ListPicker display in Web UI:

TimePicker in Web UI:

Examples

The examples below are organized around the following use cases:

  1. Stand-Alone Page
  2. Iframe
  3. Npm Install and Vue Component Use

Stand-Alone Page

To render the chatbot UI as a stand-alone full page, you can use two alternatives: 1) directly use the chatbot UI component library or 2) use the loader library. These libraries (see Libraries) provide pre-built JavaScript and CSS files that are ready to be included directly into an HTML file to display a full page chatbot UI.

When you use the chatbot UI component directly, you have to manually load the component's dependencies and provide its configuration as a parameter. The loader library alternative provides more configuration options and automates the process of loading dependencies. It encapsulates the chatbot UI component in an automated load process.

Stand-Alone Page Using the Loader Library

The loader library provides the easiest way to display the chatbot UI. The entry point to this library is the lex-web-ui-loader.js script. This script facilitates the process of loading run-time dependencies and configuration.

If you deploy using the CloudFormation method, you will get an S3 bucket with the loader library script and related files in a way that is ready to be used. Alternatively, you can copy the files from the dist directory of this repository to your web server and include the loader.

In its most simple setup, you can use the loader library like this:

<!-- include the loader library script -->
<script src="https://github.com/aws-samples/aws-lex-web-ui/raw/master/lex-web-ui-loader.js"></script>
<script>
  /*
    The loader library creates a global object named ChatBotUiLoader
    It includes the FullPageLoader constructor
    An instance of FullPageLoader has the load function which kicks off
    the load process
  */

  // The following statement instantiate FullPageLoader and
  // calls the load function.
  // It is assumed that the configuration is present in the
  // default JSON file: ./lex-web-ui-loader-config.json
  new ChatBotUiLoader.FullPageLoader().load();
</script>

Stand-Alone API through the Loader Library

Similar to the iFrame loading technique described later, the FullPageComponentLoader now provides an API allowing a subset of events to be sent to the Lex Web UI Component. These events are ping and postText. See the full page for description of this API.

Stand-Alone details

For more details and other code examples about using the loader script in a full page setup, see the full page section of the loader documentation. You can also see the source of the index.html page used in the demo site.

Stand-Alone Page Directly Using the ChatBot UI Component

Directly loading the chatbot UI component works at a lower level than using the loader library as described above. This approach can be used if you want to manually control the rendering, configuration and dependency loading process.

The entry point to the chatbot UI component is the lex-web-ui.js JavaScript file. The UI CSS styles are contained in the lex-web-ui.css file. The component depends on the Vue, Vuex, Vuetify and AWS SDK libraries. You should either host these dependencies on your site or load them from a third-party CDN.

The HTML code below is an illustration of directly loading the chatbot UI library and its dependencies.

NOTE: The versions of the links below may need to be pointed to the latest supported versions.

<html>
  <head>
    <!-- Font Dependencies -->
    <link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Roboto:300,400,500,700|Material+Icons" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">

    <!-- Vuetify CSS Dependencies -->
    <link href="https://unpkg.com/vuetify@0.16.9/dist/vuetify.min.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">

    <!-- LexWebUi CSS from dist directory -->
    <link href="https://github.com/aws-samples/aws-lex-web-ui/blob/master/lex-web-ui.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
    <!-- page specific LexWebUi styling -->
    <style type="text/css">
      #lex-web-ui-app { display: flex; height: 100%; width: 100%; }
      body, html { overflow-y: auto; overflow-x: hidden; }
    </style>
  </head>
  <body>
    <!-- application will be dynamically mounted here -->
    <div id="lex-web-ui"></div>

    <!--
      Vue, Vuex, Vuetifiy and AWS SDK dependencies must be loaded before lex-web-ui.js.
      Loading from third party CDN for quick testing
    -->
    <script src="https://unpkg.com/vue@2.5.3"></script>
    <script src="https://unpkg.com/vuex@3.0.1"></script>
    <script src="https://unpkg.com/vuetify@0.16.9"></script>
    <script src="https://sdk.amazonaws.com/js/aws-sdk-2.149.0.min.js"></script>

    <!-- LexWebUi Library from dist directory -->
    <script src="https://github.com/aws-samples/aws-lex-web-ui/raw/master/lex-web-ui.js"></script>

    <!-- instantiate the web ui with a basic config -->
    <script>
      // LexWebUi supports numerous configuration options. Here
      // is an example using just a couple of the required options.
      var config = {
        cognito: {
          // Your Cognito Pool Id - this is required to provide AWS credentials
          poolId: '<your cognito pool id>'
        },
        lex: {
          // Lex Bot Name in your account
          botName: '<your lex bot name>'
        }
      };
      // load the LexWebUi component
      var lexWebUi = new LexWebUi.Loader(config);
      // instantiate Vue
      new Vue({
        el: '#lex-web-ui',
        store: lexWebUi.store,
        template: '<div id="lex-web-ui-app"><lex-web-ui/></div>',
      });
    </script>
  </body>
</html>

Iframe

You can embed the chatbot UI into an existing page using an iframe. This approach provides a self-contained widget that can interact with the parent page hosting the iframe. The lex-web-ui-loader.js loader library provides the functionality to add it as an iframe in a page.

This loader script dynamically creates the iframe tag and supports passing asynchronous configuration using events and JSON files. It also provides an API between the iframe and the parent page which can be used to pass Lex state and other events. These features are detailed in the Iframe Embedding section of the library.

The HTML code below is a basic example of a parent page that adds the chatbot UI as an iframe. In this scenario, the libraries and related files from the dist directory of this repo are hosted in the same directory as the parent page. If hosting the iframe on the same domain as your parent page is desired, you must deploy the iframe code into your own environment to allow the use of SAMEORIGIN configurations.

Please note that the loaderOptions variable has an iframeSrcPath field which defines the path to the full page chatbot UI. This variable can be pointed to a page like the one described in the stand-alone page section.

<html>
  <head>
    <title>My Parent Page</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Welcome to my parent page</h1>
    <!-- loader script -->
    <script src="https://github.com/aws-samples/aws-lex-web-ui/raw/master/lex-web-ui-loader.js"></script>
    <script>
      /*
        The loader library creates a global object named ChatBotUiLoader
        It includes the IframeLoader constructor
        An instance of IframeLoader has the load function which kicks off
        the load process
      */

      // options for the loader constructor
      var loaderOptions = {
        // you can put the chatbot UI config in a JSON file
        configUrl: './chatbot-ui-loader-config.json',

        // the full page chatbot UI that will be iframed
        iframeSrcPath: './chatbot-index.html#/?lexWebUiEmbed=true'
      };

      // The following statement instantiates the IframeLoader
      var iframeLoader = new ChatBotUiLoader.IframeLoader(loaderOptions);

      // chatbot UI config
      // The loader can also obtain these values from other sources such
      // as a JSON file or events. The configUrl variable in the
      // loaderOptions above can be used to put these config values in a file
      // instead of explicitly passing it as an argument.
      var chatbotUiConfig = {
        ui: {
          // origin of the parent site where you are including the chatbot UI
          // set to window.location.origin since hosting on same site
          parentOrigin: window.location.origin,
        },
        iframe: {
          // origin hosting the HTML file that will be embedded in the iframe
          // set to window.location.origin since hosting on same site
          iframeOrigin: window.location.origin,
        },
        cognito: {
          // Your Cognito Pool Id - this is required to provide AWS credentials
          poolId: '<your cognito pool id>'
        },
        connect: {
          contactFlowId : '<your contact flow id>',
          instanceId : '<your instance id>',
          apiGatewayEndpoint : '<your api gateway endpoint>',
        },
        lex: {
          // Lex Bot Name in your account
          botName: '<your lex bot name>'
        }
      };

      // Call the load function which returns a promise that is resolved
      // once the component is loaded or is rejected if there is an error
      iframeLoader.load(chatbotUiConfig)
        .then(function () {
          console.log('iframe loaded');
        })
        .catch(function (err) {
          console.error(err);
        });
    </script>
  </body>
</html>

For more examples showing how to include the chatbot UI as an iframe, see the source of the parent.html page and the Iframe Embedding documentation of the loader library.

Npm Install and Vue Component Use

You can use the npm package manager to install this project. The npm installation provides a library that you can import as a module into your JavaScript code. The component is built as a reusable Vue plugin. This approach is geared to be used in a webpack based project.

Package installation using npm:

# install npm package from github repo
npm install --save awslabs/aws-lex-web-ui
# you may need to install co-dependencies:
npm install --save vue vuex vuetify material-design-icons roboto-fontface

This is a quick example showing how to import the library in your project:

// assumes that a bundler like webpack will handle import/require
// using es6 module
import LexWebUi from 'aws-lex-web-ui';
// or using require
var LexWebUi = require('aws-lex-web-ui');
// import the debug non-minimized version
import LexWebUi from 'aws-lex-web-ui/dist/lex-web-ui';

The source of the chatbot UI component resides under the lex-web-ui directory. For further details about the chatbot UI component see its README file.

Sample Site

This repository provides a sample site that you can use as a base for development. The site is a couple of HTML pages can be found in the src/website directory. The pages includes the index.html file which loads the chatbot UI in a stand-alone page and the parent.html which page loads the chatbot UI in an iframe.

These pages are the same ones that are deployed by the CloudFormation deployment method in this project. It uses the lex-web-ui-loader.js loader library to display and configure the chatbot UI. You can run a development version of this sample site on your machine.

Running Locally

This project provides a simple HTTP server to serve the sample site. You can run the server using Node.js on your local machine or a test server. Please note that running locally is only designed for testing purposes as the localhost only runs on HTTP and does not use a secure HTTPs configuration.

The chatbot UI requires proper configuration values in the files located under the src/config directory. Modify the values in the lex-web-ui-loader-config.json file under the src/config directory. If you deployed the demo site using the CloudFormation templates provided by this project, you can copy the automatically generated config files from the S3 buckets to your development host.

As a minimum,you would need to pass an existing Cognito Pool Id and Lex Bot name. For example, set the appropriate values in the src/config/lex-web-ui-loader-config.json file:

  ...
  cognito: {
    "poolId": "us-east-1:deadbeef-fade-babe-cafe-0123456789ab"
  },
  lex: {
    "botName": "myHelpBot"
  }
  ...

Before you run the local development server, you need to install the development dependencies with the command:

npm install

To start the HTTP server web on port 8000, issue the command:

# serves http://localhost:8000/index.html
# and http://localhost:8000/parent.html
npm start

If you want to hack the libraries under the src/lex-web-ui-loader directory, the project provides a hot reloadable webpack dev server setup with the following command:

# runs on port 8000
npm run dev

For a more advanced local host development and test environment, see the Dependencies and Build Setup documentation of the chatbot UI component.

Deploying

This project provides AWS CloudFormation templates that can be used to launch a fully configured working demo site and related resources (e.g. Lex bot and Cognito Identity Pool).

The CloudFormation deployment is the preferred method as it allows to automatically build, configure and deploy the application (including an optional CI/CD pipeline) and it provides a higher degree of flexibility when integrating with an existing environment.

CloudFormation Deployment

The CloudFormation stack creates a web app in an S3 bucket which you can link from your site. The S3 bucket also hosts the configuration, JavaScript and CSS files which can be loaded by your existing web pages. The CloudFormation deployment is documented in the README file under the templates directory.

Building and Deploying your own LexWebUi

If you want to modify or change LexWebUi functionality follow this release process once you are satisfied and have tested your code modifications. You'll need to create an S3 bucket to hold the bootstrap artifacts. Replace "yourbootstrapbucketname" with the name of your bucket to complete the upload. 

npm install
cd lex-web-ui
npm install
cd ../build
./release.sh
export BUCKET="yourbootstrapbucketname"
./upload-bootstrap.sh

Note that "yourbootstrapbucket" (S3 bucket) must allow objects with public-read acl to be added. This approach is described in the image below. Please be aware of the security implications of allowing public-read acl. Do not add any sensitive data into this bucket as it will be publicly readable.

Once you've uploaded your distribution to your own bootstrap bucket, you can launch an installation of LexWebUi in the AWS region where this bucket is located by using the master.yaml from your bootstrap bucket. You can also update an existing LexWebUi installation by performing a stack update replacing the current template with the template you just uploaded to your bootstrap bucket. Note that for either a fresh installation or an update, you need to change the BootstrapBucket parameter to be the name of your bootstrap bucket and the BootstrapPrefix parameter to be just "artifacts".

BuildImage

New Features

Changes in version 0.19.0

Two changes in version 0.19.0 are the ability to forward chat history as a transcript to an agent when Connect Live Chat is initiated. Details on use of the transcript can be found in Connect Live Chat Agent Readme. This version also updates the OPTIONS method in the API to configure CORS to only allow requests from the WebAppParentOrigin.

Changes in version 0.18.2

Add feature for connect live chat. Allow client to optionally interact with an agent via Connect. See Connect Live Chat Agent Readme for additional details.

Notable changes in version 0.18.1

The Lex Web Ui now supports configuration of multiple Lex V2 Bot Locale IDs using a comma separated list in the parameter LexV2BotLocaleId. The default Locale ID is en_US. Other supported values are de_DE, en_AU, en_GB, es_419, es_ES, es_US, fr_CA, fr_FR, it_IT, and ja_JP. See "https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lexv2/latest/dg/lex2.0.pdf" for the current list of supported Locale IDs.

When multiple Locale IDs are specified in LexV2BotLocaleId, the Lex Web UI toolbar menu will allow the user to select the locale to use. The user selected locale ID is preserved across page refreshes. The locale selection menu items will be disabled if the user is the middle of completing an intent as the locale ID can't be changed at this time. The selected locale ID will be displayed in the toolbar.

Lex Web Ui is now available in the Canada (Central) region - ca-central-1

For a complete list of fixes/changes in this version see CHANGELOG.md.

Fixes/changes in version 0.18.0

Fixes/changes in version 0.17.9

Fixes in version 0.17.8

Fixes in version 0.17.7

Fixes in version 0.17.6

Fixes in version 0.17.5

Features in version 0.17.4

Fixes in version 0.17.3

Fixes in version 0.17.2

Fixes in version 0.17.1

New Features in version 0.17.0

New Features in version 0.16.0

New Features in version 0.15.0

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