IBM Watson Speech To Text Browser Client Library

Allows you to easily add voice recognition to any web app with minimal code.

Warning This library is still early-stage and may see significant breaking changes.

For Web Browsers Only This library is primarily intended for use in browsers. Check out watson-developer-cloud to use Watson services (speech and others) from Node.js.

However, a server-side component is required to generate auth tokens. The examples/ folder includes a node.js one, and SDKs are available for Node.js, Java, Python, and there is also a REST API.

See several examples at https://github.com/watson-developer-cloud/speech-javascript-sdk/tree/master/examples

This library is built with browserify and easy to use in browserify-based projects (npm install --save watson-speech), but you can also grab the compiled bundle from the dist/ folder and use it as a standalone library.

WatsonSpeech.SpeechToText Basic API

Complete API docs should be published at http://watson-developer-cloud.github.io/speech-javascript-sdk/

All API methods require an auth token that must be generated server-side. (Snp teee examples/token-server.js for a basic example.)

.recognizeMicrophone({token}) -> RecognizeStream

Options: No direct options, all provided options are passed to MicrophoneStream and RecognizeStream

Requires the getUserMedia API, so limited browser compatibility (see http://caniuse.com/#search=getusermedia) Also note that Chrome requires https (with a few exceptions for localhost and such) - see https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/prefer-secure-origins-for-powerful-new-features

Pipes results through a {FormatStream} by default, set options.format=false to disable.

.recognizeElement({element, token}) -> RecognizeStream

Options:

• element: an <audio> or <video> element (could be generated pragmatically, e.g. new Audio())
• Other options passed to MediaElementAudioStream and RecognizeStream

Requires that the browser support MediaElement and whatever audio codec is used in your media file.

Will automatically call .play() the element, set options.autoplay=false to disable. Calling .stop() on the returned stream will automatically call .stop() on the element.

Pipes results through a {FormatStream} by default, set options.format=false to disable.

.recognizeBlob({data, token}) -> RecognizeStream

Options:

• data: a Blob (or File) instance.
• play: (optional, default=false) Attempt to also play the file locally while uploading it for transcription
• Other options passed to RecognizeStream

playrequires that the browser support the format; most browsers support wav and ogg/opus, but not flac.) Will emit a playback-error on the RecognizeStream if playback fails. Playback will automatically stop when .stop() is called on the RecognizeStream.

Pipes results through a {TimingStream} by if options.play=true, set options.realtime=false to disable.

Pipes results through a {FormatStream} by default, set options.format=false to disable.

Class RecognizeStream()

A Node.js-style stream of the final text, with some helpers and extra events built in.

RecognizeStream is generally not instantiated directly but rather returned as the result of calling one of the recognize* methods.

The RecognizeStream waits until after receiving data to open a connection. If no content-type option is set, it will attempt to parse the first chunk of data to determine type.

See speech-to-text/recognize-stream.js for other options.

Methods

• .promise(): returns a promise that will resolve to the final text. Note that you must either set continuous: false or call .stop() on the stream to make the promise resolve in a timely manner.

• .stop(): stops the stream. No more data will be sent, but the stream may still recieve additional results with the transcription of already-sent audio. Standard close event will fire once the underlying websocket is closed and end once all of the data is consumed.

Events

In addition to the standard Node.js stream events, the following events are fired:

• result: an individual result object from the results array. May include final or interim transcription, alternatives, word timing, confidence scores, etc. depending on passed in options. Note: Listening for result will automatically put the stream into flowing mode.

(Note: there are several other events, but they are intended for internal usage)

Class FormatStream()

Pipe a RecognizeStream to a format stream, and the resulting text and results events will have basic formatting applied:

• Capitalize the first word of each sentence
• Add a period to the end
• Fix any "cruft" in the transcription
• A few other tweaks for asian languages and such.

Inherits .promise() and .stop() methods and result event from the RecognizeStream.

Class TimingStream()

For use with .recognizeBlob({play: true}) - slows the results down to match the audio. Pipe in the RecognizeStream (or FormatStream) and listen for results as usual.

Inherits .stop() method and result event from the RecognizeStream.

Changelog

v0.7

• Changed playFile option of recognizeBlob() to just play, corrected default
• Added options.format=true to recognize*() to pipe text through a FormatStream
• Added options.realtime=options.play to recognizeBlob() to automatically pipe results through a TimingStream when playing locally
• Added close and end events to TimingStream
• Added delay option to TimingStream
• Moved compiled binary to GitHub Releases (in addition to uncompiled source on npm).
• Misc. doc and internal improvements

todo

• Solidify API
• support objectMode instead of having random events
• add text-to-speech support
• add an example that includes alternatives and word confidence scores
• enable eslint
• break components into standalone npm modules where it makes sense
• record which shim/pollyfills would be useful to extend partial support to older browsers (Promise, etc.)
• run integration tests on travis (fall back to offline server for pull requests)
• more tests in general
• update node-sdk to use current version of this lib's RecognizeStream (and also provide the FormatStream + anything else that might be handy)
• improve docs
• automatically npm publish on passing tagged build