ExternalGenerator

Call an external service with a prompt.

Basic Information

• Type: deepset_cloud_custom_nodes.generators.external.ExternalGenerator
• Components it can connect with:
  • PromptBuilder: ExternalGenerator receives the prompt from PromptBuilder.
  • DeepsetAnswerBuilder: ExternalGenerator sends the replies it received from the service to DeepsetAnswerBuilder, which uses them to build GeneratedAnswer objects.

Inputs

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
prompt	str		The prompt to pass to the service.
meta	Optional[Dict]	None	Additional metadata related to the prompt.

Outputs

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
replies	List[str]		The answers from the service.
meta	List[Dict[str, Any]]		Metadata related to the answers.

Overview

ExternalGenerator sends a prompt to an external service and returns the results from the service. It expects the service to respond with answer: str, meta: Dict. It acts just like any other Generator except that instead of calling an LLM it calls an external service.

ExternalGenerator is very flexible regarding what constitutes a prompt and what the external service does with it. For example, this component can send a SQL query as a prompt to be run on a database in an external service.

Usage Example

Initializing the Component

components:
  ExternalGenerator:
    type: generators.external.ExternalGenerator
    init_parameters:

Parameters

Init Parameters

These are the parameters you can configure in Pipeline Builder:

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
url	str		The URL of the external service to post the prompt to.
timeout	int	50	The timeout for requests sent to the URL.

Run Method Parameters

These are the parameters you can configure for the component's run() method. This means you can pass these parameters at query time through the API, in Playground, or when running a job. For details, see Modify Pipeline Parameters at Query Time.

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
prompt	str		The prompt to pass to the service.
meta	Optional[Dict]	None	Additional metadata related to the prompt.