Intent Engine provides a framework for developers to easily determine and act on user intents within websites and apps.
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To install the intent engine, simply include it in a directory where your website or application can access the file, and link the script in your site or application's files.
For the most basic setup, you can set the intent of a user by attaching the intent query component to links in your product. For example, for a link on a website that users to follow to request a quote for services, the link could set up as follows:
<a href="http://yoursite.com/contact?intent=quote">Request A Quote</a>
To detect and act on intents, you will need an instance of Intent Engine. The recommended approach to this is creating a read-only instance using the const declaration, as demonstrated here:
const intentEngine = new IntentEngine();
This link will direct the user to the Contact page of this website, establishing that the user intends to request a quote, and allowing the site to respond to this specific intent.
To detect the user’s intent, call getIntent(). While the engine stores the intent value internally, it may be useful to store the return value as a variable.
Using the detected intent, determine what action your product should take. One of the simplest ways to do this is to use String comparisons in if statements, such as shown in the example below.
if(intent.equals('intent1') {
// Do something specific to intent 1
}
else if(intent.equals('intent2') {
// Do something specific to intent 2
}
else {
// Do nothing, or perform some default action
}
setIntent() allows the user's intent to be set directly within Intent Engine by passing in a String as the intent parameter. The engine's internal intent variable will be set to this parameter, though Intent Engine will not act on this new intent.
getIntent() attempts to retrieve the intent of a user by checking for the intent query component in a URI, and if there is a value set for this component. The engine's internal intent variable will be set to the value (which may be null), and the internal nullIntent variable will be set to reflect whether or not the intent is null. In addition, the function will return the detected intent.
The setData() function allows data to be temporarily stored in Intent Engine. To use this function, data must be passed into the function through the data parameter as a JavaScript Object. By calling setData(), any existing data stored in Intent Engine will be overwritten.
Currently, data stored in Intent Engine will be lost on refresh or if the user navigates to a new page. Please account for this when storing data within Intent Engine.
getData() serves a dual purpose, as it can return both the entire set of data stored within the engine, or only return the data associated with a given key. To retreive all data stored in Intent Engine, do not pass in a key through the key parameter. To retrieve only data associated with a given key, pass the name of the key in through the key parameter as a String.
To add data to be stored in Intent Engine, use the addData() function. This function requires two parameters, key and value. The key parameter must be passed in as a String, and represents the key name for the data. The value parameter can be any valid JavaScript data type, and represents the data to be added into Intent Engine.
To remove data from the data storage within Intent Engine, use the removeData() function. This function requires a key to be passed in through the key parameter as a String. This function will set the data associated with a key to be null, and thus no data that has been removed will be recoverable.
To retrieve the previous intent set within Intent Engine, use the getPreviousIntent() function. This function requires no parameters, and will return a string value representing the name of the previous intent.
For projects utilizing the Intent Engine page structure, the getPages() function checks for pages present in a given file, and sets the engine's internal pages variable to an array of found pages. If no pages are found, this variable will store an empty array.
For projects utilizing the Intent Engine page structure, hasPage() accepts a page name as a String, and returns a boolean value indicating whether or not the page exists.
For projects utilizing the Intent Engine page structure, showIntentContent() shows the page associated with the intent, and hides any other page that was visible to the user. The function accepts a String representing the current intent and a transition time for displaying the desired page (in milliseconds).
The actOnIntent() function combines the actions of the setIntent() and showIntentContent() functions. This function accepts two String parameters, intent and transitionTime, which represent the intent which should be set and the transition time (in milliseconds) for acting on this new intent. While the intent parameter is required, it is not necessary to pass in a transition time, though a default value will be used if no transition time is specified.