watson-nlu-usage

Watson Natural Language Understanding (NLU) API usage module.

The absorption of Alchemy API by IBM Watson Developer Cloud into Watson NLU means usage information no longer comes back in API response headers. This module provides a way to get usage information using IBM Bluemix APIs instead.

• Installation
• Usage
• Bluemix setup
• API
  • constructor
  • estimateCost
  • getUsage
• Developing

Installation

npm install --save watson-nlu-usage

Usage

const WatsonNLUUsage = require('watson-nlu-usage');
const watsonNLUUsage = new WatsonNLUUsage({
    username: '[e-mail]',
    password: 'password-for-said-user',
    organizationName: 'some-bluemix-organization',
    spaceName: 'some-bluemix-space',
    serviceName: 'some-bluemix-service',
    instanceName: 'some-watson-nlu-instance',
    plan: 'free', // default
    region: 'us-south' // default
});
 
// Estimate the cost of a call to Watson NLU using the free plan
watsonNLUUsage
    .estimateCost({ plan: 'free', featureCount: 2, payload: 'Some text to send to Watson NLU....' })
    .then(costEstimate => {
        // costEstimate: { plan: 'free', moneyCost: 0, itemCost: 673 }
    });
 
// Estimate the cost of a call to Watson NLU using the paid standard plan
watsonNLUUsage
    .estimateCost({ plan: 'standard', featureCount: 2, payload: 'Some text to send to Watson NLU....' })
    .then(costEstimate => {
        // costEstimate: { plan: 'standard', moneyCost: 625.32, itemCost: 250738 }
    });
 
// Get usage for the current month
watsonNLUUsage
    .getUsage()
    .then(usageStats => {
        console.log(usageStats);
        // usageStats: { itemCount: 1010, totalCost: 0.03 }
    });
 
// Get usage for the current month including free calls in the itemCount
watsonNLUUsage
    .getUsage({ includeFreeUsage: true })
    .then(usageStats => {
        console.log(usageStats);
        // usageStats: { itemCount: 1010, totalCost: 0.03 }
    });
 
// Get usage for January 2017
watsonNLUUsage
    .getUsage({ month: '2017-01' })
    .then(usageStats => {
        // usageStats: { itemCount: 1010, totalCost: 0.03 }
    });

Bluemix setup

1. A Watson NLU instance. Follow their page to log into Bluemix and if you don't already have these, create the following: an organization containing a space containing a service containing a (Watson NLU) instance. Keep track of the names of all those components and make sure you have added a user with at least auditor permissions. You will need that user's credentials to get usage information.

2. You may also want to take note of the region for your organization. This module assumes us-south by default.

API

constructor

new WatsonNLUUsage(options) ==> watsonNLUUsage instance

• options.username: Username (email address) for user with audit access to the target instance.

• options.password: Password for for user in options.username.

• options.organizationName: Bluemix organization name owning the target instance.

• options.spaceName: Bluemix space name (owned by options.organizationName) owning the target instance.

• options.serviceName: Bluemix service name (owned by options.spaceName) owning the target instance.

• options.instanceName: Bluemix instance name for the target Watson NLU instance.

• options.plan (default: 'free'): The Watson NLU plan options.instanceName is on. One of 'free' | 'standard'.

• options.region (default: 'us-south'): The Bluemix region to use for API calls.

estimateCost

Estimates the cost (in items and money) of a call to Watson NLU API. This estimate has a crude way of looking at the size of the payload and at worst over-estimates the cost since it does not take into account any cleaning the Watson NLU API may do to the payload server-side before analyzing it. It also is set to read only the first 50kb of a payload in keeping with the published limitations.

.estimateCost(options) ==> Promise(costEstimate)

• options.payload: Text payload for which to estimate the processing cost.

• options.featureCount (default: 1): The number of features to extract from options.payload (e.g. concepts and entities extraction are 2 features).

• options.plan (default: 'free'): One of 'free' | 'standard'. The plan to use when estimating the cost. If set to 'standard' it will gather the current month's usage and use it to bootstrap the estimate into the right cost tiers.

• options.includeFreeUsage (default: false): Include free usage calls (typically 1000 per day) in costEstimate.itemCost.

• costEstimate.plan: NLU plan used to estimate the cost of options.payload.

• costEstimate.itemCost: Estimated number of NLU items incurred for extracting options.featureCount features from options.payload.

• costEstimate.moneyCost: Estimated $ cost of extracting costEstimate.itemCost.

getUsage

.getUsage(options) ==> Promise(usageStats)

• options.month (default: current month, format: 'YYYY-MM' ): Month to get usageStats for.

• options.includeFreeUsage (default: true): Include free calls in usageStats.totalCost.

• usageStats.itemCount: The number of NLU items consumed in the month specified in options.month.

• usageStats.totalCost: The total cost for processing usageStats.itemCount in options.month.

Developing

npm install
npm run build
npm run test