An Alexa Skill that fetches headlines from various BBC News RSS feeds. For example, "Alexa, ask RSS Reader for the technology news"
Note: This skill uses the Alexa Skills Kit - intended for basic custom skills. It doesn't use the Alexa Flash Briefing Skills API which, at the time of writing, doesn't work in the UK region.
Ensure that you have npm installed. Sign up on the Amazon developer portal and sign up for Amazon Web Services so you can use Lambda to host the skill.
Clone this repository.
Log in to the Amazon developer portal and create an Alexa Skill. The speechAssets folder of this repository contains an Intent schema and samples utterances that you can use. Make a note of the Alexa Skill ID when you create the skill.
In the index.js file, replace YOUR_ALEXA_SKILL_ID_HERE with your Alexa Skill ID, in the following line:
var APP_ID = "YOUR_ALEXA_SKILL_ID_HERE";
In your command prompt, navigate to the repository folder and run the following commmand:
npm install rss-parser
This will create a node_modules folder.
Create a zip containing the index.js file, AlexaSkill.js file and the node_modules folder.
Log in to Amazon Web Services and create a Lambda function using an Alexa skill blueprint. When prompted for code, select "Upload Zip" and upload the zip file you created.
Make a note of the ARN for your Lambda function and enter it in your Alexa Skill configuration on the Amazon developer portal. You can now test your skill.
Once deployed, you can say things like:
- "Alexa, ask RSS Reader for the technology news"
- "Alexa, tell RSS Reader to play the local news" - note: this will play Northern Ireland news by default
- "Alexa, ask RSS Reader for the front page news"
- "Alexa, ask RSS Reader for the world news"
It also works for Business, Politics, Science, Entertainment, Education, Health feeds.
This repository makes use of the Alexa Skills Kit: https://github.com/amzn/alexa-skills-kit-js - see LICENSE.txt. This project was a collaboration between @al1ra and @mt_montgomery.