We all have our favorite places. It may be your childhood hometown, an exotic place you visited, or even your college town. Regardless of why a city is your favorite, we all have our favorite spots to visit and want to tell others about, and that’s exactly what this new skill template helps you do.
This new template uses AWS Lambda, the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK), and the Alexa SDK for Node.js, in addition to the New York Times Search API for news. We provide the business logic, error handling, and help functions for your skill, you just need to provide the data and credentials.
For this example, we will create a skill for the city of Seattle, Washington. The user of this skill will be able to ask things like:
- “Alexa, ask Seattle Guide what there is to do.”
- “Alexa, ask Seattle Guide about the Space Needle.”
- “Alexa, ask Seattle Guide for the news.”
You will be able to use your own city in the sample provided, so that users can learn to love your location as much as you do. This might also be a good opportunity to combine the knowledge from this template with our Calendar Reader sample, so that you can provide information about the events in your town, as well as the best places to visit.
After completing this tutorial, you’ll know how to do the following:
- Create a city guide skill - This tutorial will walk Alexa skills developers through all the required steps involved in creating a skill that shares information about a city, and can search for news about that location.
- Understand the basics of VUI design - Creating this skill will help you understand the basics of creating a working Voice User Interface (VUI) while using a cut/paste approach to development. You will learn by doing, and end up with a published Alexa skill. This tutorial includes instructions on how to customize the skill and submit for certification. For guidance on designing a voice experience with Alexa you can also watch this video.
- Use JavaScript/Node.js and the Alexa Skills Kit to create a skill - You will use the template as a guide but the customization is up to you. For more background information on using the Alexa Skills Kit please watch this video.
- Manage state in an Alexa skill - Depending on the user’s choices, we can handle intents differently.
- Get your skill published - Once you have completed your skill, this tutorial will guide you through testing your skill and sending your skill through the certification process so it can be enabled by any Alexa user. You may even be eligible for some Alexa swag!
- Interact with the Bing Search API.
Get started and build your first—or next—Alexa skill today.
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