danquack / Serverless-Alexa-with-Dynamodb

An Alexa facts-based skill designed to report metrics out of dynamodb

Serverless Alexa with Dynamodb

---

This sample alexa skill is a facts based skill designed to report metrics out of dynamodb. The idea is that something external would update dynamodb, which would then be read through alexa.

Prereqs

1. Install nodejs (https://nodejs.org/en/download/)
2. Install the aws cli and set up a profile (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/cli-chap-getting-started.html)
3. Create a developer alexa account (https://developer.amazon.com/alexa)
4. Read vendor documentation (https://github.com/marcy-terui/serverless-alexa-skills)

Devtime dependencies

1. A dynamodb table must be created for facts.
   • The table should contain a primary key of "metric" i. The keys should be lowercase space separated words
   • The table should have a "total_count" and "response" attributes
2. OATH2 is configured for sls alexa (https://serverless.com/blog/how-to-manage-your-alexa-skills-with-serverless/)
   • Provided in these instruction is creating your skill. Create the skill, and then add the the skill id to environment variables. sls alexa create --name $ALEXA_SKILL_NAME --locale en-US --type custom
3. The following environment variables should be baked into your system
   • ALEXA_SKILL_NAME
   • AWS_ACCOUNTID
   • AWS_REGION: default - us-east-1 (if you modify this, you will also have to update the handler file)
   • AWS_ALEXA_FACTS_TABLENAME: default - Facts
   • AMAZON_VENDOR_ID: Created in step 2
   • AMAZON_CLIENT_ID: Created in step 2
   • AMAZON_CLIENT_SECRET: Created in step 2
   • ALEXA_SKILL_ID: Created in step 2a

Install instructions

1. Clone the repository
2. Run npm install
3. Update serverless.yml manifest publishing information
4. Update serverless.yml with intents and uterrances. (Note: Metric name are regex replaced by capitalized characters. i.e MyMetricIntent is 1:1 correlated with my metric in the dynamodb table)
5. run sls deploy to deploy the function to aws
6. run sls alexa build
7. run sls alexa update
8. Test your new alexa skill in the alexa console

Sample Queries

Once you start adding intents, add them below.