So I am fairly new to the <that> tag.  I have always known about it but never really dabbled with it.  So sorry, but this is a fairly easy [noob] question.

So I finally wrote some code for <that> tag when I realized something, do all the commands need their own individual AIML if they are all connected?

Here is an example….

This code basically turns on a lamp using an email trigger top IFTTT.com

Can I use this long code in only one AIML or do they all need to have its own individual AIML file?  Do any of you see anything wrong with this code?

Hi, Dominique.

I took the liberty of enclosing your AIML code with [code ] tags (minus the space, of course). Otherwise, the forum software does strange things to the code.

One problem that I see is that you’ve included punctuation with your <that> tags, and that’s a no-no. This:

Will not work. It really should look like this:

at the very least, and ideally, should look like this:

Now most AIML interpreters will sort out the “normalization” bit, but NONE will handle that question mark, which will cause it to fail.

I haven’t truly looked at the code thoroughly yet (I’m in a conference ATM), but that kind of grabbed my attention, so I thought I’d point it out. I’ll revisit this in about an hour or so.

Nice, I should clarify that this AIML code is for Denise.

To be honest I did not even notice the ? until you pointed it out.  I will test without it.

Ok, I’m back. The conference call took less time than I had expected.

Obviously, Denise uses custom AIML tags, hence the <email> and <silence> tags. I’ve never really gotten into using Denise, so I’m not familiar with the proper syntax for the tags, but given what I know about XML in general, I’d have to say that you might want to double check the capitalization of at least the <EMail> tag that I see in there, and possibly the <ChatInput> tag, as well. AIML is a sub-set of the XML language, and follows many of the same rules, and one of those rules that they share is that all tags are case sensitive, so <email>, <Email> and <EMail> are completely different tags.

Other than that, I don’t really see anything that “jumps out at me”.

[edit]
I take that back. I see more punctuation in your <that> tags, as well as a <star> tag that doesn’t belong.

Instead of using <star> inside the pattern-side <that>, you should just use the “*” (minus the quotes). I would also suggest changing this:

and this:

to this:

and this:

This will simplify the code a little, while adding a bit more flexibility in the process. Again, the normalization (converting it to all upper-case letters) isn’t all that important, but it does make the code easier to read in the long run.

The simplification and flexibility come into play when you have a dozen or more lights to control. There are ways to reduce the AIML code in such a way that you’d only need one control category to handle all of your lights. If you can provide me an example list of lights and/or appliances to control, I can provide you a simplified set of AIML categories to do just that.

That is interesting.  Usually it doesn’t matter when I use lowercase in my AIML.  I will try the * suggestion, thanks.