In this chapter we are going to build an exciting, dual purpose microservice.

We will learn:

• How to use the Microsoft  Text-to-Speech (TTS) engine
• How to build a microservice that can respond to speech requests
• How to use Text to Speech for search results

The internals are built around TTS specifically, the Microsoft Speech API. More concretely, we will use the TTS engine. Our microservice will be responsible for talking back to us, something I've always discouraged my children from ever doing to me, yet here I am programming a computer to do the same. But that's an entirely different book..

Our microservice will provide two unique pieces of functionality. First, you will be able to send a message and have the microservice repeat what you typed. You will have your choice of a male or female voice, the ability to set the volume and rate, and of course, the text. Just think of all the exciting things that you can do with this approach.

The second feature the microservice will implement is searching for a text term via Wikipedia. The results are then read to you via the text to speech engine.