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Describe Attribute In Formflow

In this article, we will discuss the "Describe" attribute in FormFlow.

Purpose

As per the Microsoft Documentation

Picture showing the Microsoft documentation of describe attribute in form flow in microsoft bot framework

Click to Enlarge

Fields In Describe Attribute

Describe attributes contain the following fields.

Description - Change the default description of field, property or enum.
Image - Add an image on the card. In this attribute, the URL of an image is specified.
Message - Message to return when a button is pressed in the card.
Title - Specifies the title on the card.
SubTitle - Specifies the subtitle on the card.

Example

In this example, we will first discuss the "Description" attribute. This is how we can add an attribute.

[Describe(Description = "the name (written on your PAN card)")]
public string name;

Here is the output

Picture showing the default message when describe attribute is not used

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Picture showing the overridden message when describe attribute is used

Click to Enlarge

Next step is to discuss "Image", "Message", "Title" and "SubTitle". Here is the code.

public enum MaritalStatus { [Describe(Message = "Thank you for selecting the option Married")]
	Married,
	Unmarried,
	Single
}

[Describe(
Description = "Marital Status", Image = "http://gyansangrah.com/ArticleImages/introduction_to_photoshop_three.JPG", Title = "Need for documentation purpose", SubTitle = "Please select between Married/Unmarried/Single")]
public MaritalStatus ? maritalStatus;

Picture showing the marital status card without image, title, subtitle and message

Click to Enlarge

Picture showing the marital status card with image, title, subtitle and message

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Once you click on the button "Married", you will get the following message.

Picture showing the output when the user clicks on the married option in marital status card

Click to Enlarge

Complete Code

using Microsoft.Bot.Builder.FormFlow;
using System;

namespace Bot_Application1.Dialogs {
	public enum MaritalStatus { [Describe(Message = "Thank you for selecting the option Married")]
		Married,
		Unmarried,
		Single
	}

	[Serializable]
	public class FormFlowDemo { [Describe(Description = "the name (written on your PAN card)")]
		public string name;

		[Describe(Description = "Marital Status", Image = "http://gyansangrah.com/ArticleImages/introduction_to_photoshop_three.JPG", Title = "Need for documentation purpose", SubTitle = "Please select between Married/Unmarried/Single")]
		public MaritalStatus ? maritalStatus;

		public static IForm < FormFlowDemo > GetForm() {
			return new FormBuilder < FormFlowDemo > ().Message("Welcome to support chat system. Please enter the following information to serve you better").Build();
		}
	}
}

Prompt Attribute

Prompt attribute overrides the complete description. Let us consider the above example. In this example, we will add the "Prompt" attribute above the "Marital Status".

So, the updated code would be

[Prompt("What is your marital status")]
public MaritalStatus ? maritalStatus;

Here is the output

Picture showing the output of the prompt attribute in microsoft bot framework

Click to Enlarge

Posted By -	Karan Gupta

Posted On -	Tuesday, October 13, 2020

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