Define and configure agent

Introduction

The first step for the creation of a new agent in ATRIA includes the definition of the agent. This is done by extending the BaseAgent class, in charge of creating the basic structure for all the agents to be developed and the management of its configuration.

Base class

The BaseAgent class provides the necessary functionality to initialize agent, manage configurations and interact with the agent package.

Access here the BaseAgent class in the Github repository.

The ATRIA agent-server uses this class to identify all the agents of the agent package coming from the BaseAgent.
This class promotes functionalities to initialize and build the agent.

Build agent

To build an agent it is necessary to extend this base class and, at least, extend these functionalities, according to the specific goals assigned to the agent.

• get_class_ref: This method is used to get the class reference of the agent. It is used to identify the agent in the system.
• build: This method is used to build the agent. It is used to set up the necessary configurations and to get everything required to initialize the agent.
• __call__: This method is used to call the agent. It is used to execute the agent’s functionality.
• initialize: This method is optional and used to initialize the agent. For example, it can be used to set up the agent’s state or to load any necessary data.

Configuration and information

The BaseAgent class provides a way to manage the agent’s configuration and information.

Information

The agent information is generated during the agent creation stage and can be accessed through the info field. It contains the following fields:

• identifier: Unique identifier of the agent. This value corresponds to the class_ref of the agent.
• name: Name of the agent. This value corresponds to the name of the agent coming from API.
• deployment_name: Name of the agent deployment used to identify the agent environment that corresponds to the agent.
• base_name : Base name of the agent used to identify the type agent. This value corresponds to the name of the agent class.
• version : Version of the agent used to identify the version agent. This value corresponds to the version of the agent package installed.

Configuration

The agent configuration is generated during the agent creation stage from the aura-configuration-api, within the API agentBase.configuration field.

Here is an example.

 {
      "id": "XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX",
      "name": "test-agent",
      "deploymentName": "test-deployment-agent",
      "description": "A test agent",
      "communication": {
          "communicationType": "http"
      },
      "agentBase": {
          "name": "test-agent",
          "configuration": {
            "test": "test_value",
            "url": "http://localhost:8000"
          }
      }
  }

The entire content of this field is inserted into the agent under creation as a dictionary in the config field of the agent.

To obtain the configuration, access this config field as shown in the example below, where we want to obtain the test field within the agent’s configuration.
The use of the config will always be to fetch the information and not to store it between requests, as this config can be updated on the fly without the need to restart the component, so the config is read on each request.

test_value = self.config.get("test", None)

All this configuration is at agent level, but there are also configuration values at environment level. To obtain this environment configuration, use the command below:

test_value = os.getenv("TEST_ENV_VAR")