We’re excited to introduce a new Alexa skill-building course for Ruby developers in collaboration with Makers Academy, a leading web developer bootcamp based in the UK. This course is offered for free online.

This is part six and the final blog of our Makers Academy series for Ruby developers. Learn more about this free training on the Alexa Skills Kit and read part one, part two, part three, part four, and part five. 

This is part five of our Makers Academy series for Ruby developers. Learn more about this free training on the Alexa Skills Kit and read part one, part two, part three, and part four.

This is part four of our Makers Academy series for Ruby developers. Learn more about this free training on the Alexa Skills Kit and read part one, part two and part three.

Today's post is by Sam Morgan, Head of Education at Makers Academy

This is part three of our Makers Academy series for Ruby developers. Learn more about this free training on the Alexa Skills Kit and read the first module and second module.

By Sam Morgan, Head of Education at Makers Academy

Editor’s note: This is part two of our Makers Academy series for Ruby developers. Learn more about this free training on the Alexa Skills Kit and read the first module.

Welcome to the second post in our series designed to take you from zero to hero using Alexa with Ruby. In our first module, we:

• Set up a simple Alexa skill
• Set up a tunneled Sinatra application
• Hooked the two together to say "Hello, world"

In this module, we'll handle variable data from users using slots. This module introduces:

• Slots
• Custom slot types

This module uses:

• Sinatra
• Ruby's JSON library
• Ruby's HTTP library
• The Numbers API

We’re going to build a fact-checking mechanism so users can ask for facts about particular numbers. Here are some things users will be able to ask Alexa:

Alexa, ask Number Facts to tell me a trivia fact about 42.

Alexa, ask Number Facts to tell me a math fact about 5.

Users will be able to choose:

• a number (any number!)
• a fact type 

Alexa will respond with an interesting fact about that number that is specific to that type of fact.

By Sam Morgan, Head of Education at Makers Academy

Editor’s note: This is part one of our Makers Academy series for Ruby developers. Learn more about this free training on the Alexa Skills Kit in this blog post. 

Welcome to the first module of Makers Academy's short course on building Alexa skills using Ruby. Amazon's Alexa Skills Kit allows developers to extend existing applications with deep voice integration and construct entirely new applications that leverage the cutting-edge voice-controlled technology.

This course will cover all the terminology and techniques required to get fully-functional skills pushed live to owners of Alexa-enabled devices all around the world using Ruby and Sinatra.

What's in This Module?

This module contains a basic introduction to scaffolding a skill and interacting with Alexa. This module introduces:

• Intent schemas
• Utterances
• Alexa communication paradigm
• Tunneling a local application using ngrok over HTTPS
• Connecting Alexa to a local development environment
• Alexa-style JSON requests and responses 

During this module, you will construct a simple skill called “Hello World.” While building this skill, you will come to understand how the above concepts work and play together. This module uses:

• Sinatra
• Ruby's JSON library

Let's get started! 

We’re pleased to announce our collaboration with Makers Academy on a new Alexa Skills Kit training course for Ruby developers.

Makers Academy is a leading web developer bootcamp based in London, UK. Its highly-selective, full-time program teaches the principles of software craftsmanship. Makers Academy has graduated over 700 students into their dream jobs as junior developers.

We believe natural user interfaces such as those based on speech represent the next major disruption in computing. Now is a great time for developers to take advantage of this new form of interaction and to learn to build voice-first experiences for Alexa, the voice service that powers Amazon Echo. Makers Academy’s mission is to teach students the most used technologies in today's marketplace, and we’re excited to team up to prepare you for the future of voice computing.