Eh up,
OK - I admit it has been awhile. But after all that stuff in the papers and the whole on-off thing with Angelina Jolie - well, you could understand my mind has been elsewhere.
Anyhoo, I'm back and after the brushing the cobwebs away I thought I'll use my blog for the power of good and dump up some stuff as I go along, like interesting pieces of code and that kind of thing.
Today's masterpiece is this little thing I posted up on the forum the other day. In short, it piggybacks onto the ATT Text-To-Speech demonstration site that allows simply words / sentences to be converted to speech by returning a WAV file. The data is POST'ed to the server and the WAV file returned. You can find out more information at -> http://www.research.att.com/projects/tts/demo.html
Anyway, I thought it would be fun to mess around with the HTTPWebRequest and HTTPWebResponse objects to achieve this and you can find the source below. Of course, I also thought it would be fun to make it process complicated swearing terms often accompanied by people I know, e.g. 'Felching' in the voice of Rosa brings tears to my eyes.
It makes the request sending over the appropriate POST data, it receives the response back with the location of the WAV file, it then makes a second request for the WAV file - obtains the byte data in a stream - copies that in a byte array and plays it using the sndPlaySound API Function.
There are a few of things of note...
- I've set the 'request.AllowAutoRedirect' to false to check whether any session data was used and decided to keep it in. Yes, I could set this to true and simply get the WAV directly from the initial request - but hey, it was fun to check out the header data.
- Ideally, I should have put Asycn methods for the response and byte data functions, feel free to do this if that kind of thing turns you on.
- Safe to say that this isn't production code and I'm sure ATT will not be overly happy with anyone using this service commercially. To put it another way - you ain't seen me, right!
Have fun - M
Imports System.Text
Imports System.Net
Imports System.IO
Public Class Form1
Inherits System.Windows.Forms.Form
#Region " Windows Form Designer generated code "
Public Sub New()
MyBase.New()
'This call is required by the Windows Form Designer.
InitializeComponent()
'Add any initialization after the InitializeComponent() call
End Sub
'Form overrides dispose to clean up the component list.
Protected Overloads Overrides Sub Dispose(ByVal disposing As Boolean)
If disposing Then
If Not (components Is Nothing) Then
components.Dispose()
End If
End If
MyBase.Dispose(disposing)
End Sub
'Required by the Windows Form Designer
Private components As System.ComponentModel.IContainer
'NOTE: The following procedure is required by the Windows Form Designer
'It can be modified using the Windows Form Designer.
'Do not modify it using the code editor.
Friend WithEvents txtSpeak As System.Windows.Forms.TextBox
Friend WithEvents lblLabel1 As System.Windows.Forms.Label
Friend WithEvents cmbVoice As System.Windows.Forms.ComboBox
Friend WithEvents lblLabel2 As System.Windows.Forms.Label
Friend WithEvents butConvert As System.Windows.Forms.Button
Friend WithEvents prgDown As System.Windows.Forms.ProgressBar
<System.Diagnostics.DebuggerStepThrough()> Private Sub InitializeComponent()
Me.txtSpeak = New System.Windows.Forms.TextBox
Me.lblLabel1 = New System.Windows.Forms.Label
Me.cmbVoice = New System.Windows.Forms.ComboBox
Me.lblLabel2 = New System.Windows.Forms.Label
Me.butConvert = New System.Windows.Forms.Button
Me.prgDown = New System.Windows.Forms.ProgressBar
Me.SuspendLayout()
'
'txtSpeak
'
Me.txtSpeak.Location = New System.Drawing.Point(120, 28)
Me.txtSpeak.Name = "txtSpeak"
Me.txtSpeak.Size = New System.Drawing.Size(416, 20)
Me.txtSpeak.TabIndex = 0
Me.txtSpeak.Text = "Drydo is a V B city God and everyone else is his hoes!"
'
'lblLabel1
'
Me.lblLabel1.Location = New System.Drawing.Point(36, 32)
Me.lblLabel1.Name = "lblLabel1"
Me.lblLabel1.Size = New System.Drawing.Size(76, 16)
Me.lblLabel1.TabIndex = 1
Me.lblLabel1.Text = "Text to speak:"
'
'cmbVoice
'
Me.cmbVoice.Location = New System.Drawing.Point(120, 56)
Me.cmbVoice.Name = "cmbVoice"
Me.cmbVoice.Size = New System.Drawing.Size(144, 21)
Me.cmbVoice.TabIndex = 2
'
'lblLabel2
'
Me.lblLabel2.Location = New System.Drawing.Point(36, 60)
Me.lblLabel2.Name = "lblLabel2"
Me.lblLabel2.Size = New System.Drawing.Size(76, 16)
Me.lblLabel2.TabIndex = 3
Me.lblLabel2.Text = "Voice:"
'
'butConvert
'
Me.butConvert.Location = New System.Drawing.Point(120, 124)
Me.butConvert.Name = "butConvert"
Me.butConvert.Size = New System.Drawing.Size(340, 24)
Me.butConvert.TabIndex = 4
Me.butConvert.Text = "Speechify"
'
'prgDown
'
Me.prgDown.Location = New System.Drawing.Point(36, 92)
Me.prgDown.Name = "prgDown"
Me.prgDown.Size = New System.Drawing.Size(500, 16)
Me.prgDown.TabIndex = 5
'
'Form1
'
Me.AutoScaleBaseSize = New System.Drawing.Size(5, 13)
Me.BackColor = System.Drawing.SystemColors.Control
Me.ClientSize = New System.Drawing.Size(564, 161)
Me.Controls.Add(Me.prgDown)
Me.Controls.Add(Me.butConvert)
Me.Controls.Add(Me.lblLabel2)
Me.Controls.Add(Me.cmbVoice)
Me.Controls.Add(Me.lblLabel1)
Me.Controls.Add(Me.txtSpeak)
Me.Name = "Form1"
Me.Text = "Form1"
Me.ResumeLayout(False)
End Sub
#End Region
Declare Function sndPlaySound Lib "winmm.dll" Alias "sndPlaySoundA" (ByVal lpszSoundName As Byte(), ByVal uFlags As Integer) As Integer
Private Const SND_MEMORY As Integer = &H4
Private Const SND_ASYNC As Integer = &H1
Private Const PROCESS_DOMAIN As String = "http://hegel.research.att.com/"
Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
' Add the voice values
Dim dt As New DataTable
' Add the columns
dt.Columns.Add("ID", GetType(String))
dt.Columns.Add("Name", GetType(String))
' Accept
dt.AcceptChanges()
' Add the entries
Dim dr As DataRow
dt.LoadDataRow(New Object() {"crystal", "Crystal ...... US English"}, False)
dt.LoadDataRow(New Object() {"mike", "Mike ...... US English"}, False)
dt.LoadDataRow(New Object() {"rich", "Rich ...... US English"}, False)
dt.LoadDataRow(New Object() {"lauren", "Lauren .... US English"}, False)
dt.LoadDataRow(New Object() {"claire", "Claire .... US English"}, False)
dt.LoadDataRow(New Object() {"rosa", "Rosa ...... Latin Am. Spanish"}, False)
dt.LoadDataRow(New Object() {"alberto", "Alberto ... Latin Am. Spanish"}, False)
dt.LoadDataRow(New Object() {"klara", "Klara ..... German"}, False)
dt.LoadDataRow(New Object() {"reiner", "Reiner .... German"}, False)
dt.LoadDataRow(New Object() {"alain", "Alain ..... French"}, False)
dt.LoadDataRow(New Object() {"juliette", "Juliette .. French"}, False)
dt.LoadDataRow(New Object() {"charles", "Charles ... UK English"}, False)
dt.LoadDataRow(New Object() {"audrey", "Audrey .... UK English"}, False)
' Bind to the combobox
With Me.cmbVoice
.DataSource = dt
.DisplayMember = "Name"
.ValueMember = "ID"
End With
End Sub
Private Sub butConvert_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles butConvert.Click
' Generate the appropriate post data
Dim postData As String
postData = "txt=" & Me.txtSpeak.Text & "&voice=" & Me.cmbVoice.SelectedValue.ToString
' Generate the initial request and response objects
Dim request As HttpWebRequest
Dim response As HttpWebResponse
request = CType(WebRequest.Create(PROCESS_DOMAIN & "/tts/cgi-bin/nph-talk"), HttpWebRequest)
request.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
request.ContentLength = postData.Length
request.Method = "POST"
request.AllowAutoRedirect = False
' Perform the request
Dim requestStream As Stream = request.GetRequestStream()
Dim postBytes As Byte() = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(postData)
requestStream.Write(postBytes, 0, postBytes.Length)
requestStream.Close()
response = CType(request.GetResponse(), HttpWebResponse)
' Obtain the location of the WAV from the 'location' element of the header
Dim WAVLocation As String = response.Headers.Item("Location").ToString()
' Close the previous response
response.Close()
request = Nothing
response = Nothing
' Perform a second connection to obtain the WAV
Dim WAVrequest As HttpWebRequest = WebRequest.Create(PROCESS_DOMAIN & WAVLocation)
Dim WAVresponse As HttpWebResponse
With WAVrequest
.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
.Method = "GET"
End With
' Obtain the byte response from the server
WAVresponse = CType(WAVrequest.GetResponse(), HttpWebResponse)
' Then take the stream into its byte format
Dim s As Stream = WAVresponse.GetResponseStream
Dim buffer(WAVresponse.ContentLength - 1) As Byte
Dim TotalRead As Integer = 0
' Set up the progressbar
Me.prgDown.Maximum = WAVresponse.ContentLength
Me.prgDown.Minimum = 1
' Read the stream data into a byte array
Do
TotalRead += s.Read(buffer, TotalRead, buffer.Length - TotalRead)
Me.prgDown.Value = TotalRead
Loop Until TotalRead = buffer.Length
' Cleanup
s.Close()
WAVresponse.Close()
WAVrequest = Nothing
WAVresponse = Nothing
' Finally, play the WAV as a byte stream
sndPlaySound(buffer, SND_ASYNC Or SND_MEMORY).ToString()
End Sub
End Class
. . .