Gemini docs : The multi-turn conversations example needs a slight modification

[ImadSaddik]

The following code was taken from the Quickstart tutorial, that shows how to use Gemini in Android. In the multi-turn conversations example, I faced a problem when running the provided code snippet.

// For text-only input, use the gemini-pro model
GenerativeModel gm = new GenerativeModel(/* modelName */ "gemini-pro",
// Access your API key as a Build Configuration variable (see "Set up your API key" above)
    /* apiKey */ BuildConfig.apiKey);
GenerativeModelFutures model = GenerativeModelFutures.from(gm);

// (optional) Create previous chat history for context
Content.Builder userContentBuilder = new Content.Builder();
userContentBuilder.setRole("user");
userContentBuilder.addText("Hello, I have 2 dogs in my house.");
Content userContent = userContentBuilder.build();

Content.Builder modelContentBuilder = new Content.Builder();
modelContentBuilder.setRole("model");
modelContentBuilder.addText("Great to meet you. What would you like to know?");
Content modelContent = userContentBuilder.build();

List<Content> history = Arrays.asList(userContent, modelContent);

// Initialize the chat
ChatFutures chat = model.startChat(history);

// Create a new user message
Content userMessage = new Content.Builder()
    .addText("How many paws are in my house?")
    .build();

Executor executor = // ...

// Send the message
ListenableFuture<GenerateContentResponse> response = chat.sendMessage(userMessage);

Futures.addCallback(response, new FutureCallback<GenerateContentResponse>() {
    @Override
    public void onSuccess(GenerateContentResponse result) {
        String resultText = result.getText();
        System.out.println(resultText);
    }

    @Override
    public void onFailure(Throwable t) {
        t.printStackTrace();
    }
}, executor);

When using the code as is, I get an Exception and to solve the problem. We should specify the user role when creating the userMessage.

So instead of this :

// Create a new user message
Content userMessage = new Content.Builder()
    .addText("How many paws are in my house?")
    .build();

It should be replaced by :

// Create a new user message
Content.Builder userMessageBuilder = new Content.Builder();
userMessageBuilder.setRole("user");
userMessageBuilder.addText(query);
Content userMessage = userMessageBuilder.build();

[thatfiredev]

@ImadSaddik Sorry that you ran into that, but I'm glad that you managed to find the solution - and thanks for calling it out! We have now added setRole("user") to the multi-turn conversations example. :)

[ImadSaddik]

Awesome 😎

[MohammedAbidNafi]

Whenever I add setRole its actually returning error and build() is not getting detected and if I write
Content userMessage = new Content.Builder() .setRole("user") .addText("How many paws are in my house?") .build();

This way then addText is not detected

[thatfiredev]

@MohammedAbidNafi That's because these methods don't return a builder. You'll have to use them exactly as the snippet above:

Content.Builder userMessageBuilder = new Content.Builder();
userMessageBuilder.setRole("user");
userMessageBuilder.addText("How many paws are in my house?");
Content userMessage = userMessageBuilder.build();

Java support has not been prioritized in this SDK, unfortunately, so we ended up with these uncovenient APIs :/
I will discuss with the team about improving Java support.