For this month’s API Challenge, we are challenging you to extract topics from your favorite interview for a chance to win a Hyper X Quad Cast microphone! Think about the last interesting or funny interview you watched/listened to…wouldn’t it be cool to auto detect and generate topics with a couple of APIs?
To participate in the challenge, follow the instructions below. We have provided two options of ways you can complete the challenge, both equally fast and simple:
1. Using Node.js, or
2. Using Postman
Must have:
1. An audio (.mp3) or video (.mp4) file
2. Node.js or Postman
3. Symbl.ai account — create one for free here
You can process both audio (.mp3) or video (.mp4) files using either Node.js or Postman, but the following instructions explicitly show you how to use Node.js with an audio file and Postman with a video file. Feel free to process any file using either option.
Option #1 – Process Topics using Node.js (mp3 version)
Step 1 – Sign in to your Symbl.ai account OR sign up HERE (it’s free)
Step 2 – Install Node.js on your machine: https://nodejs.org/en/download/ (skip if already installed).
Step 3 – Head over to this GitHub repo and download the ZIP file. Once downloaded, navigate to the script.js file.
Step 4 – Grab both your `appId` and your `appSecret` from your Symbl.ai account and paste it into the fields to authenticate, then save the file.
Step 4 – Choose your favorite interview and save it in the topic-api-script-main folder (must be a .mp3 file) If you need to convert a podcast episode to a .mp3 follow these steps HERE.
Step 5 – Open the terminal application on your machine. Run the script using “node script.js ./[name of audio file]” command.
Step 7 – Tweet a screenshot to @symbldotai or post on LinkedIn tagging Symbl.ai of the topics you generated from the interview the hashtags #BuildWithSymbl #SymblGiveaway
Option #2 – Process Topics using Postman (mp4 version)
Step 1 – Sign in to your Symbl.ai account OR sign up HERE (it’s free).
Step 2 – Open up Postman on your browser/device and download the Symbl.ai API collection or explore the public workspace online in Postman.
Step 3. Grab both your `appId` and your `appSecret` from your Symbl.ai account to authenticate with Postman.
Step 4. Select your favorite interview (you will need a .mp4 file) If you need to convert a video to a .mp4 file follow these steps HERE.
Step 5. On Postman, once you’ve received your authentication token (Step 3), navigate to the Async APIs folder and make a POST request to the Video – Submit Video File (mp4) API. Once the request is completed, you should receive your conversationID
Step 6. Under the Async APIs folder, make a GET request to the “Check request status” API (processing time varies depending on how large the file is). Job status should show “completed” to move forward.
Step 7. Navigate to the Conversation APIs folder to find the Topics API and make a simple REST endpoint call to:
‘GET https://api.symbl.ai/v1/conversations/{conversationID}/topics’
Step 8. Tweet a screenshot to @symbldotai or post on LinkedIn tagging Symbl.ai of the topics you generated from the interview with the hashtags #BuildWithSymbl #SymblGiveaway
Tweets/posts must be posted by Saturday, April 30 to qualify.
**We will randomly select one winner on Monday, May 2.
Best of luck, and thanks in advance to those participating and helping us constantly improve our APIs. Feel free to leave us your feedback once you have completed, we’d love to hear your thoughts!
Additional Resources:
- Reach out to us on Slack
- GET Topics
- POST Video API
- POST Audio API
- Check out our Symbl.ai 101 video
