Session attributes not persisting while switching intent

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ashish asked · Jul 03, 2018 at 03:26 PM

Session attributes not persisting while switching intent

I just started out with Alexa Skill development course on Codecademy. I was experimenting with session attributes with a very basic example. I have a LaunchRequest intent in which I am setting a session attribute to a particular value. And, I am using this attribute in another intent which is triggered on some utterance.

However, the value of session attribute when switching intent is undefined. Somehow, the session attribute value is not persisting between intents. I am testing my skill in simulator in the developer console.

This might sound to be a very amateur. Any help or resources will be highly appreciated. You can find my handler code below in Node.js

var handlers = {

  // Launch request
  'LaunchRequest': function() {
    this.response.speak('Hey there. How are you?');
    this.attributes.variable='hey';
    this.emit(':responseReady');
  },
  //Session intent to use the previously defines attribute value

  sessionIntent: function(){
      this.response.speak('Variable value is '+this.attributes.variable);
      this.emit(':responseReady');
  }
};

alexa skills kit how-to session attributes

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2 Answers

Answer 1 · 2018-07-09T15:26:59Z

barry@amazon answered · Jul 09, 2018 at 03:26 PM

Hi @ashish and thanks for your question.

The code snippet you posted is from the V1 of the SDK. A new version has been launched in April 2018. While you can still code in V1, we recommend you use the newest SDK V2, which has some more intuitive coding.

This is how your code would look like in V2:

const LaunchRequestHandler = {
  canHandle(handlerInput) {
    return handlerInput.requestEnvelope.request.type === 'LaunchRequest';
  },
  handle(handlerInput) {
    // get session attributes
    const attributes = handlerInput.attributesManager.getSessionAttributes();
    // set 'variable' (you can name whatever you want) attribute
    attributes.variable = 'hey';
    // save session attributes
    handlerInput.attributesManager.setSessionAttributes(attributes);

    return handlerInput.responseBuilder
      .speak('Hey there. How are you?')
      .withShouldEndSession(false)
      .getResponse();
  },
};

const SessionIntentHandler = {
  canHandle(handlerInput) {
    return handlerInput.requestEnvelope.request.type === 'IntentRequest'
    && handlerInput.requestEnvelope.request.intent.name === 'sessionIntent';
  },
  handle(handlerInput) {
    // get session attributes
    const attributes = handlerInput.attributesManager.getSessionAttributes();
    // read session attributes
    let read = attributes.variable;

    return handlerInput.responseBuilder
      .speak("Variable value is: " + read)
      .getResponse();
  },
};

You can find more samples and tutorials on the Alexa's GitHub repository.

Feel free to contact us if you have any further questions.

Regards,
Barry

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NewUser-4a78fcf8-5a79-4d18-b7f0-01605f9e8d6a · Jul 11, 2019 at 11:32 AM

Is ".withShouldEndSession(false)" in the LaunchRequestHandler really necessary?

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barry@amazon ♦♦ NewUser-4a78fcf8-5a79-4d18-b7f0-01605f9e8d6a · Jul 12, 2019 at 12:36 PM

Hello and thank you for your question.

If you want the session to remain reopen after the LaunchRequest, you can do it by either having the

.withShouldEndSession(false)

or

.reprompt('some speech')

Otherwise, the session will be closed.

Regards,
Barry

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Answer 2 · 2018-07-03T20:06:11Z

Daniel M. | DigiVoice.io answered · Jul 03, 2018 at 08:06 PM

Don't know, but maybe there is a sytax error on Codecademy?

Try:

this.attributes['variable']='value'; // this is to save
var read = this.attributes['variable'] // this is to read

Don't forget to enable DynamoDB access in your lambda function and set this on top of your lambda nodejs skill code

alexa.dynamoDBTableName = 'TableName'; // that's it

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Session attributes not persisting while switching intent

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