IBM Watson WebSocket connection failure: "HTTP Authentication failed; no valid credentials available"

Question

I'm doing the tutorial for IBM Watson Speech-to-text. In the section "Using the WebSocket interface", subsection "Opening a connection and passing credentials", I copied the following code:

var token = watsonToken;
console.log(token); // token looks good
var wsURI = 'wss://stream.watsonplatform.net/speech-to-text/api/v1/recognize?watson-token=' +
  token + '&model=es-ES_BroadbandModel';
var websocket = new WebSocket(wsURI);
websocket.onopen = function(evt) { onOpen(evt) };
websocket.onclose = function(evt) { onClose(evt) };
websocket.onmessage = function(evt) { onMessage(evt) };
websocket.onerror = function(evt) { onError(evt) };

I'm using Angular so I made a value for the token:

app.value('watsonToken', 'Ln%2FV...');

I get back an error message:

WebSocket connection to 'wss://stream.watsonplatform.net/speech-to-text/api/v1/recognize?watson-toke...&model=es-ES_BroadbandModel' failed: HTTP Authentication failed; no valid credentials available

I tried hardcoding the token:

var wsURI = 'wss://stream.watsonplatform.net/speech-to-text/api/v1/recognize?watson-token=Ln%2FV2...&model=es-ES_BroadbandModel';

Same error message.

IBM's documentation on tokens says that an expired or invalid token will return a 401 error, which I didn't get, so I presume that my token is neither expired nor invalid. Any suggestions?

Sayuri Mizuguchi Sayuri Mizuguchi · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-28T11:33:51

I think you can see the Official Example from IBM Developers here.

The error is because the authentication does not work fine before you send the request to recognize, try to follow the same step inside this repository, like:

const QUERY_PARAMS_ALLOWED = ['model', 'X-Watson-Learning-Opt-Out', 'watson-token', 'customization_id'];

/**
 * pipe()-able Node.js Readable/Writeable stream - accepts binary audio and emits text in it's `data` events.
 * Also emits `results` events with interim results and other data.
 * Uses WebSockets under the hood. For audio with no recognizable speech, no `data` events are emitted.
 * @param {Object} options
 * @constructor
 */
function RecognizeStream(options) {
  Duplex.call(this, options);
  this.options = options;
  this.listening = false;
  this.initialized = false;
}
util.inherits(RecognizeStream, Duplex);

RecognizeStream.prototype.initialize = function() {
  const options = this.options;

  if (options.token && !options['watson-token']) {
    options['watson-token'] = options.token;
  }
  if (options.content_type && !options['content-type']) {
    options['content-type'] = options.content_type;
  }
  if (options['X-WDC-PL-OPT-OUT'] && !options['X-Watson-Learning-Opt-Out']) {
    options['X-Watson-Learning-Opt-Out'] = options['X-WDC-PL-OPT-OUT'];
  }

  const queryParams = extend({ model: 'en-US_BroadbandModel' }, pick(options, QUERY_PARAMS_ALLOWED));
  const queryString = Object.keys(queryParams)
    .map(function(key) {
      return key + '=' + (key === 'watson-token' ? queryParams[key] : encodeURIComponent(queryParams[key])); // our server chokes if the token is correctly url-encoded
    })
    .join('&');

  const url = (options.url || 'wss://stream.watsonplatform.net/speech-to-text/api').replace(/^http/, 'ws') + '/v1/recognize?' + queryString;

  const openingMessage = extend(
    {
      action: 'start',
      'content-type': 'audio/wav',
      continuous: true,
      interim_results: true,
      word_confidence: true,
      timestamps: true,
      max_alternatives: 3,
      inactivity_timeout: 600
    },
    pick(options, OPENING_MESSAGE_PARAMS_ALLOWED)
  );

This code is from IBM Developers and for my project I'm using and works perfectly.

You can see in the code line #53, set the listening to true, otherwise it will eventually timeout and close automatically with inactivity_timeout applies when you're sending audio with no speech in it, not when you aren't sending any data at all.

Have another example, see this example from IBM Watson - Watson Developer Cloud using Javascript for Speech to Text.

IBM Watson WebSocket connection failure: "HTTP Authentication failed; no valid credentials available"

2 Answers