Topcoder Visual Recognition Nodejs Starter Application

The IBM Watson Visual Recognition service analyzes the visual content of images and videos to understand the scene without any input text describing

Getting Started

1. Create a Bluemix Account

Follow these instruction to sign up for a new IBM Buemix account, or use an existing account. Watson Services in Beta are free to use.

2. Download and install the Cloud-foundry CLI tools

3. Edit the manifest.yml file and change the <application-name> to something unique.

applications:
- services:
- visual-recognition-service
name: <application-name>
command: node app.js
path: .
memory: 128M

The name you use will determinate your application url initially, e.g. <application-name>.mybluemix.net.

4. Connect to Bluemix in the command line tool

$ cf api https://api.ng.bluemix.net
$ cf login -u <your user ID>

5. Create the Visual Recognition service in Bluemix

$ cf create-service visual_recognition free visual-recognition-service

6. Push it live!

$ cf push <your topcoder handle>-fun-watson

See the full Getting Started documentation for more details, including code snippets and references.

Running locally

The application uses Node.js and npm so it assumes you already have it installed. If not, use the above link to install node and npm.

1. Copy the credentials from your visual-recognition-service service in Bluemix to app.js, you can see the credentials using:

   $ cf env <application-name>

   Example output:

   System-Provided:
   {
   "VCAP_SERVICES": {
     "visual_recognition": [{
         "credentials": {
           "url": "<url>",
           "password": "<password>",
           "username": "<username>"
         },
       "label": "visual_recognition",
       "name": "visual-recognition-service",
       "plan": "free"
    }]
   }
   }

   You need to copy username and password.

2. Go to the project folder in a terminal and run: npm install

3. Start the application with node app.js

4. Open http://localhost:3000

Troubleshooting

To troubleshoot your Bluemix app the main useful source of information are the logs, to see them, run:

$ cf logs <application-name> --recent

License

This sample code is licensed under Apache 2.0. Full license text is available in LICENSE.