The local client can be used for development and testing of OAT. It is implemented as a Flask application which by default will be accessible at http://localhost:9000 after starting an OAT deployment.
There are two Flask endpoints defined in main.py. The first handles requests to the base URL and renders the page using Flask's render_template method. The second endpoint (/getresponse) is triggered by the call method in scripts.js, and is responsible for sending the current input to OAT before receiving and displaying the system response. The address to send the requests to is defined by the DISTRIBUTOR_URL environment variable.
The request sent to the orchestrator is an HTTP POST with a JSON payload. The JSON structure is:
{
"text": "user input text",
"id": "session ID",
"headless": "false",
}
The id is randomly generated by assignID() in scripts.js, which is called by the onLoad handler of chat.html. All the IDs the local client generates will have a local_ prefix so they can be distinguished in the sessions database.
The response sent back by OAT is a JSON-serialized OutputInteraction proto object (see shared/protobufs/taskmap.proto).
The OutputInteraction objects returned by OAT include information about the policy that created them as an aid for debugging and testing. See the OutputSource protobuf and set_source in shared/utils/policies.py.
The local client will display a coloured background for system responses based on the originating policy name. The colours used for this are defined in style.css.
Additonally the message prefix will be set to BOT[policy_name], and clicking the policy_name text will display a popup with the filename and line number.