README.md

Alexa

Provides support for implementing an Amazon Alexa Skill.

Installation

The package can be installed as:

1. Add alexa to your list of dependencies in mix.exs:

   def deps do [{:alexa, "~> 0.1.6"}] end

2. Add alexa to your list of applications in mix.exs:

   def application do [applications: [:logger, :alexa]] end

Usage

Creating a new Alexa skill is easy.

defmodule MyAwesomeSkill do
  use Alexa.Skill, app_id: "<alexa_skill_app_id>"      

  def handle_intent("SayHello", request, response) do
    response |> say("Hello World!")
  end
end

Alexa.Skill implements Elixir's Application behaviour, so you need to start a worker process for your skill. Add something like this to your application's supervision tree.

worker(MyAwesomeSkill, [])

You can also optionally pass the app_id at this point as well.

worker(MyAwesomeSkill, [[app_id: Application.get_env(:my_awesome_skill, :alexa_app_id)]])

When your application starts, this will register your skill with the Alexa module. It will be used to handle any incoming requests with the matching app_id.

Then create an app that exposes an endpoint so that you can receive incoming Alexa requests.

Here's an example plug implementation:

defmodule Router do
  use Plug.Router

  plug :match
  plug :dispatch

  post "/command" do
    {:ok, body, conn} = read_body(conn)
    request = Poison.decode!(body, as: %Alexa.Request{})
    response = Alexa.handle_request(request)
    conn = send_resp(conn, 200, Poison.encode!(response))
    conn = %{conn | resp_headers: [{"content-type", "application/json"}]}
    conn
  end
end