GetPlayableItems Directives (VSK Echo Show)

A list of entity objects to search. The relationship between different entity types should usually be interpreted as an AND operation. For example, if the request contains {genreName = "Comedy," actorName ="Tom Hanks"}, it implies that the search result should contain Comedy movies/TV shows with Tom Hanks.

However, if the request contains multiple entities of the same type, such as {videoName = "Interstellar," VideoName = "Interstellar Wars"}, then you can consider this as an OR operation and can search for all the entities in the directive. If in doubt, assume that the top entity within the type (videoName in this case) is the most relevant.

Let's say you have another request with {mediaType = "MOVIE', genreName = "Comedy," actorName ="Tom Hanks," actorName = "Tom Hanks}. This is assuming that there are multiple actors named Tom Hanks. In such cases, you can search for movies with all the actors in the request and then filter based on the Comedy genre to return all the search results.

Alexa does not rank the entities today because Alexa does not have a way to know what the user wants to play when there are multiple matching entities.

entities with a type: Channel contain identifying data for a television channel. For example:

 {
  "type": "Channel",
  "value": "PBS",
  "externalIds": {
      "gracenote": "MV000000099001"
  },
  "entityMetadata": {
      "channelCallSign": "KBTC",
      "channelNumber": "123"
  }
} 

Entity types for video content. For information about video content entity types, see Entity Types for Video Content. In addition to that list, Alexa Skills Kit has added the following types for multimodal devices: LISTTYPE, SORTTYPE.

LISTTYPE is populated when users wants to browse their Watchlist or Library. For example, utterances like "Show me my Watchlist" or "Show me my Video Library." LISTTYPE can have the following enum values:

• WATCHLIST: For "Show me my Watchlist" — used to show videos the user has added to their watchlist.
• LIBRARY: For "Show me my Video Library" — used to show videos that are in the users' library. Typically, these are the videos that have been purchased by the user.

SORTTYPE is used to give additional information about the request that should be used during the searches and how results need to be sorted. For example, for "Show me recommended movies," Alexa needs recommendations from the content provider. SORTTYPE can have the following enum value:

• RECOMMENDED: This value is populated for utterances like "Show me recommended movies," or "Show me recommended action movies," etc.

Examples: MEDIATYPE, VIDEO, ACTOR, GENRE, FRANCHISE, SEASON, EPISODE

The value of the entity. For channels, the name of the channel.

Examples: Interstellar, PBS

A map of external identifiers for this entity; key is the provider, value is the id.

Examples: key = gracenote or gti, value = SH000000012

The external Gracenote identifier.

Example: ST0000000666661

ContentType specifies the content category to be searched. Note that this is different from mediaType in the entities. MediaType specifies the type of media to search for, such as, Movies, or TV shows, and so on. So if the users are interested in browsing recorded movies, they would say something like Show me recorded movies. In this case, the mediaType will be set to MOVIE, while contentType will be set to RECORDING. Similarly, when the users want to Browse live tv content, they would say something like Show me whats on now, and, in this case ,the contentType will be set to LIVE."

Examples: RECORDING, LIVE, ON_DEMAND

The locale for the user that should be used to get displayable information for the search results. A locale in the same format specified for languages in in the Network Working Group Best Current Practice 47 (BCP-47). If you receive an unrecognized locale, default to en-US.

Examples: en-US, en-GB, de-DE

The minimum number of results to return in this call for which a pageToken is accepted. If you return less than the minResultLimit field along with a pageToken to fetch more results, then Alexa does not consider the pageToken to fetch the new items and only displays whatever Alexa received.

For a pageToken to be considered for fetching more results, the number of items have to match at least the value in minResultLimit. However, the number of items can be more than minResultLimit up to a max of maxResultLimit. If the number of items is more than the maxResultLimit, Alexa discards the items after the maxResultLimit.

Example: 8

A limit to the maximum number of results to return. See description of minResultLimit field for more details.

Example: 25

Provides the start and end times that the request should act on. This is usually used for Live TV or Recording only and not for On Demand content. Generally, if the time window is available and can be used to filter the results, you should use it.

For providers that only search for On Demand content, the time window field is usually be set to null and can be ignored.

For Live TV or Recording, if the user specifies the time window, for example, "Search for TV shows between 4 and 5 pm," or "Find TV shows recorded last week," then you should filter the results based on the start and end times whenever available.

Depending on the capabilities, either both the fields — start and end — can be present, or any one field can be present. For example for "Search TV shows between 4 and 5 pm," both the fields are present. For "Show me TV shows starting at 5 pm," only the start field is populated while end is null.

The start time of the time window.

Examples: 2016-09-07T23:59:00+00:00, 2018-01-24T02:30:00Z

The end time of the time window.

Examples: 2016-09-07T23:59:00+00:00, 2018-01-24T02:30:00Z

Token to fetch the next set of results. An opaque string sent by the provider which is passed back in subsequent search requests.

A list of mediaIdentifiers for the videos that are shown as search results on the screen.

Identifier for the mediaItem. See Retrieve Image Size Data from the mediaIdentifier Object.

An identifier for the video item that is used to fetch any display or playback related metadata information on subsequent calls to GetDisplayableItemsMetadata or GetPlayableItemsMetadata. This identifier is opaque to Alexa and is just used as-is when querying for metadata information.