The Java SDK uses the Watson Developer Cloud services, a collection of REST APIs and SDKs that use cognitive computing to solve complex problems.

• Installation
  • Maven
  • Gradle
• Usage
• Getting the Service Credentials
• Questions
• IBM Watson Services
  • Alchemy Language
  • Alchemy Vision
  • Alchemy Data News
  • Concept Insights
  • Conversation
  • Dialog
  • Discovery
  • Document Conversion
  • Language Translation
  • Language Translator
  • Natural Language Classifier
  • Personality Insights
  • Retrieve and Rank
  • Speech to Text
  • Text to Speech
  • Tone Analyzer
  • Tradeoff Analytics
  • Visual Recognition
• Reactive API call for v3.0.1
• Breaking Changes for v3.0
• Android
• Running in Bluemix
• Default Headers
• Eclipse and Intellij
• License
• Contributing

All the services:

<dependency>
	<groupId>com.ibm.watson.developer_cloud</groupId>
	<artifactId>java-sdk</artifactId>
	<version>3.5.3</version>
</dependency>

Only Retrieve and Rank:

<dependency>
	<groupId>com.ibm.watson.developer_cloud</groupId>
	<artifactId>retrieve-and-rank</artifactId>
	<version>3.5.3</version>
</dependency>

All the services:

'com.ibm.watson.developer_cloud:java-sdk:3.5.3'

Only Retrieve and Rank:

'com.ibm.watson.developer_cloud:retrieve-and-rank:3.5.3'

Only Visual Recognition:

'com.ibm.watson.developer_cloud:visual-recognition:3.5.3'

Snapshots of the development version are available in Sonatype's snapshots repository.

Download the jar with dependencies here.

Now, you are ready to see some examples.

The examples within each service assume that you already have service credentials. If not, you will have to create a service in Bluemix.

If you are running your application in Bluemix, you don't need to specify the credentials; the library will get them for you by looking at the VCAP_SERVICES environment variable.

You will need the username and password (api_key for AlchemyAPI) credentials for each service. Service credentials are different from your Bluemix account username and password.

To get your service credentials, follow these steps:

1. Log in to Bluemix at https://bluemix.net.

2. Create an instance of the service:

   1. In the Bluemix Catalog, select the service you want to use.
   2. Under Add Service, type a unique name for the service instance in the Service name field. For example, type my-service-name. Leave the default values for the other options.
   3. Click Create.

3. Copy your credentials:

   1. On the left side of the page, click Service Credentials to view your service credentials.
   2. Copy username and password(api_key for AlchemyAPI).

Once you have credentials, copy config.properties.example to src/test/resources/config.properties, and fill them in as necessary.

If you are having difficulties using the APIs or you have a question about the IBM Watson Services, please ask a question on dW Answers or Stack Overflow.

To do a reactive call, you need to add rx(). With reactive you can use synchronous or asynchronous calls as you like, and you can combine multiple rest calls more efficiently.

Use callback way

service.getDialogs().rx().thenApply(new CompletableFuture.Fun<List<Dialog>, Integer>() {
  @Override
  public Integer apply(List<Dialog> dialogs) {
    return dialogs.size();
  }
}).thenAccept(new CompletableFuture.Action<Integer>() {
  @Override
  public void accept(Integer integer) {
    System.out.println(integer);
  }
});

Use asynchronous callback way

service.getDialogs().rx().thenApplyAsync(new CompletableFuture.Fun<List<Dialog>, Integer>() {
  @Override
  public Integer apply(List<Dialog> dialogs) {
    return dialogs.size();
  }
}).thenAccept(new CompletableFuture.Action<Integer>() {
  @Override
  public void accept(Integer size) {
    System.out.println(size);
  }
});

Use synchronous way

Integer size=service.getDialogs().rx().get().size();
System.out.println(size);

The version 3.0 is a major release focused on simplicity and consistency. Several breaking changes were introduced.

Before 3.0 all the API calls were synchronous.

List<Dialog> dialogs = dialogService.getDialogs();
System.out.println(dialogs);

To do a synchronous call, you need to add execute().

List<Dialog> dialogs = dialogService.getDialogs().execute();
System.out.println(dialogs);

To do an asynchronous call, you need to specify a callback.

service.getDialogs().enqueue(new ServiceCallback<List<Dialog>>() {
  @Override
  public void onResponse(List<Dialog> response) {
    System.out.println(response);
  }

  @Override
  public void onFailure(Exception e) {
  }}
);

See the CHANGELOG for the release notes.

To migrate to 3.0 from a previous version, simply add .execute() to the old methods. For example if you previously had

List<Dialog> dialogs = dialogService.getDialogs();
System.out.println(dialogs);

Just add execute() on the end, and your code will work exactly the same as before.

List<Dialog> dialogs = dialogService.getDialogs().execute();
System.out.println(dialogs);

The library supports Android 2.3 and above. For Java, the minimum requirement is 1.7.
It depends on OkHttp and gson.

When running in Bluemix, the library will automatically get the credentials from VCAP_SERVICES. If you have more than one plan, you can use BluemixUtils to get the service credentials for an specific plan.

PersonalityInsights service = new PersonalityInsights();
String apiKey = BluemixUtils.getAPIKey(service.getName(), BluemixUtils.PLAN_STANDARD);
service.setApiKey(apiKey);

Default headers can be specified at any time by using the setDefaultHeaders(Map<String, String> headers) method.

The example below sends the X-Watson-Learning-Opt-Out header in every request preventing Watson from using the payload to improve the service.

PersonalityInsights service = new PersonalityInsights();

Map<String, String> headers = new HashMap<String, String>();
headers.put(HttpHeaders.X_WATSON_LEARNING_OPT_OUT, 1);

service.setDefaultHeaders(headers);

// All the api calls from now on will send the default headers

To build and test the project you can use Gradle (version 1.x): or Apache Maven.

Gradle:

$ cd java-sdk
$ gradle jar  # build jar file (build/libs/watson-developer-cloud-3.5.3.jar)
$ gradle test # run tests

or Maven:

$ cd java-sdk
$ mvn install

If you want to work on the code in an IDE instead of a text editor you can easily create project files with gradle:

$ gradle idea     # Intellij IDEA
$ gradle eclipse  # Eclipse

or maven:

$ mvn idea:idea # Intellij IDEA
$ mvn eclipse:eclipse # Eclipse

Find more open source projects on the IBM Github Page

This library is licensed under Apache 2.0. Full license text is available in LICENSE.

See CONTRIBUTING.md.