Better way to get entities from new CLU in Bot Framework Composer?

Question

Exploring cutting over from LUIS to CLU in BotFramework Composer.

In general hooking it up was easy which is nice.

Just want to check in on the best / easiest way to set properties from entities detected:

• for LUIS, @myEntity was the way
• for CLU it seems we need
  • =first(turn.recognized.entities.myEntity).text for a normal entity and
  • =first(first(turn.recognized.entities.myEntity).extraInformation).key for a phrase list item.

If you know a shortcut, love to hear it.

I tried @myEntity and it did not work

I tried

• =first(turn.recognized.entities.myEntity).text for a normal entity and
• =first(first(turn.recognized.entities.myEntity).extraInformation).key for a phrase list item.

This works but is long. I would be happy to hear if someone found a better way.

Answer 1

Ok. The following means I can now replace @ with dialog.e. and old LUIS code will work:

• make a new dialog called SetEntities
• call it at each intent
• pass it indicesAndValues(turn.recognized.entities)

The dialog SetEntities just loops through each entity returned, works out whether it's a phrase list item or not, and then returns it as an object to the original dialog where it gets set in dialog.e. Why e? Short. Preferrable if BFC did this out of the box.