Alternative to firebase functions to create actions-on-google integration

Question

I am trying to find an alternative for Firebase to create functions that will work with actions-on-google DialogFlow class. I am creating a nodeJS app which will create a web service endpoint which will be configured as the Fulfillment URL in the DialogFlow dashboard. All the business logic to handle the request from API.AI will be at the nodeJS app. This app will then send back response by calling app.ask() and other related methods of API.AI (aka DialogFlow)

Reason: Our deployment cloud is on OneOps and we have dedicated assemblies for nodeJS apps. That is, I need to deploy this node app on our OneOps cloud and not on Firebase cloud.

Is there an alternative over Firebase here?

Answer 1

Absolutely! With Dialogflow you can define any URL (preferable HTTPS) in Dialogflow's console and you're free to use any hosting platform that can speak HTTP:

Also, you should be able to use the Action on Google library to respond to requests on most Node.js environments

Answer 2

Certainly! You can use whatever you want - all that Dialogflow requires is that the webhook be on a public address with a valid HTTPS certificate.

When designing the webhook, you'll need to accept a POST request from Dialogflow that contains JSON as the body, and similarly respond with a JSON body.

Since you're using node.js, you'll likely be using Express. One thing to note if you'll be using the actions-on-google library is that it expects that Express has already populated the req.body with a JSON object - not with the string body. This is typically done with middleware such as body-parser.