how to receive case-insensitive arguments in rivescipt

[hark444]

I want to change a password through a service called by RiveScript.
So, while getting the current password from user, RiveScript converts everything to lowercase.

Is there anyway we can retrieve case-insensitive arguments in RiveScript.

[dcsan]

if you look back in the issues there was a lot of discussion on this. generally for 99% of chatbot inputs, we had a problem where content authors would type case sensitive things and it wouldn't match.

+ I don't know
- why not?

rivescript expects all triggers to be in lower case so the capitalized I would not match.
I can't recall where this finally ended up but the use case of passwords seems like an edge case...

[hark444]

@dcsan Thanks for the response. Is there a work-around for this?

[kjleitz]

@hark444 In my project, I capture the input first (before giving it to the RS engine) and set it as a uservar before having the engine reply. Since a uservar can be set with persistent case, you can then access it in RiveScript later as a case-sensitive string. I don't know if it's sufficient for your use case, but, as a very simple example:

someInputElement.addEventListener('change', (event) => {
  const message = event.target.value;
  engine.setUservar('kjleitz', 'originalmessage', message);
  engine.reply('kjleitz', message);
});

engine.setSubroutine('check-password', (_rs, [password, ..._args]) => {
  // 'pAs$w0RD' would normally be turned into 'pasw0rd' if you passed it via <star>,
  // but if you pass it via <get originalmessage> it'll keep the caps and special chars
  return password === 'pAs$w0RD';
});

+ let me in
^ Okay, what is the password?

+ *
% okay what is the password
* <call>check-password <get originalmessage></call> == true => Come on in!
- WRONG!

user: Let me in!
bot: Okay, what is the password?
user: pAs$w0RD
bot: Come on in!