Calling External Runtimes

It is often necessary to combine the results of multiple runtimes to produce the desired output. The preferred approach to do this is using the Network Runtime. If the Network Runtime functionality is not suufficient to acheive the desired results, it is possible to call one runtime from another using the callExternal method.

How does it work?

To use the callExternal method your post scoring logic must extend the PostScoreNetworkSuper class. callExternal takes three arguments; params, api_params, and network. params is the JSONObject object that is passed through the runtime process. api_params is a JSONObject object that contains the parameters to be passed to the external runtime. network is a JSONObject object that contains the endpoint of the external runtime with the key url. This is illustrated in this truncated example:

    JSONObject network = new JSONObject();
    network.put("url", "http://ecosystem-runtime-two:8092");
 
    JSONObject api_params = new JSONObject();
    api_params.put("customer", customer_number);
    api_params.put("campaign", "demo-recommender");
    api_params.put("subcampaign", "demos");
    api_params.put("channel", "callExternal");
    api_params.put("result_count", 2);
    api_params.put("userid", "runtime_one");
    api_params.put("in_params", new JSONObject());
 
    JSONObject response = callExternal(params, api_params, network);

callExternal will return the response from the runtime as a JSONObject object. The response can then be used in the remainder of the runtime process.