assemblyai-example

Brief demo using AssemblyAI's speech-to-text transcription service using a pre-recorded audio file.

(For clarity, this demo involves using an audio file located locally on the client's PC or Mac.)

How To Use

1. Clone this repository.

2. Open a terminal window in main directory of the repository and run the command npm install to install the package dependencies.

3. This demo uses environment variables--specifically, two environment variables:

   • ASSEMBLYAI_API_KEY: Fill in this variable with your private AssemblyAI API key.
   • WEBHOOK_URL: Fill in this variable with the URL you create for allowing access to your local server from AssemblyAI's backend servers. Be sure to finish the string with /hook since this is the endpoint that AssemblyAI's POST request will search for.

   Create a .env file to store those environment variables and their values.

4. In a terminal window, start up your secure tunnel from the outside to localhost. I used ngrok, so in the terminal window, I ran ngrok http 3000. The port must be the same one used as in the Express web server.

5. In a different terminal window, run the command npm run start to get the web server up and running.

6. In another terminal window, run the command npm run send <<absolute path to audio/video file on your device>> where you must include the absolute path to the file you are wishing to transcribe.

The last step executes the file uploadAndTranscribeAudio.js file, which effectively makes a POST request to AssemblyAI's /upload endpoint and /transcript endpoint. Once the transcription is complete or an error occurs on AssemblyAI's servers, a webhook is sent to the /hook endpoint on the client side. In this endpoint, validation is performed to determine if there was an error; if none, the completed transcription is fetched for at /transcript/${transcript_id} on AssemblyAI's side.

Enjoy!