I'm a computer science student at a university. I recently discovered that I can create skills for my alexa and I have a couple ideas but there's something that I'm confused about.
I want to make a word game. It should have a backend dictionary of words but I'm not sure how I should be connecting/finding this backend. If someone could point me to somewhere I can learn to connect API's or something that would help get what I need done, I would really appreciate it.
Thanks.
Hi,
Could you elaborate a bit more, about how is your application structured and where does this dictionary fit in?
What is the size of this back end dictionary of words? What is the format of this dictionary of words?
Thanks,
Amith Hegde
I'm trying to make a word game that would expect Alexa to take in a word, for example "apple" and then alexa would give that word a value. The next player would then have to give a response to that word for example "elephant".
What I want to know is how do I get Alexa to take in an english dictionary of words. Is there a remote backend I can connect to in which Alexa can take in those words?
Follow this simple tutorial, it includes connecting to backend web APIs Building Your First Conversational App
Some ways to make a list of words available to your Alexa skill:
For my Wind Catcher skill I hosted a remote API in front of a database so both my skill and other applications can retrieve the data.
Hi Steve,
Is it possible for you to share any resource, that you would recommend to host a remote API in front of a database, preferable an RDS database?
Thanks,
Amith Hegde
Hey Amith,
I use Amazon Lightsail (http://lightsail.aws.amazon.com), which is EC2 servers with static costs based on dedicated resources ($5/mo to start, but eligible for Alexa promotional credits). Easy to set up and get going.
I set up a Postgres database on the server itself.
I wrote the RESTful API in Java on top of Spring Boot. As with any other server, I had to redirect port 80 to 8080 to get around the Linux port security.
My usual practice is to put all the commands I use for setting up a server into a text file so I can repeat the process easily. I can provide you with the text file privately if you'd like.
AWS RDS would be a little different of a case. You'd probably be better off connecting directly to the database from your skill's lambda instead of setting up a remote server, building out a REST API, and connecting to that, which would then have to connect to your RDS DB anyway. This AWS doc has first steps to connect to RDS from your lambda, but as with all of the Amazon documentation it only covers a very simple use case (creating and connecting to the database) and leaves out anything about actually using the database.
Hi Steve,
Thank you for the clear explanation.
I have tried connecting AWS Lambda to RDS before but in vain. I have a use case in my skill where I need this connection between RDS and AWS Lambda (in my case python and not node.js) to work.
As you correctly hinted, connecting my skill's AWS directly to database is the right way to go, for which I shall continue my research.
But I am thankful to you for REST API solution which I never visualized. I will definitely try this out for now as it seems possible to implement and if it works, I hit the jackpot.
I would greatly appreciate if you could share the steps, that you have handy.
Thanks,
Amith Hegde
Email: mythcard@gmail.com
Hi LifesAGame,
There are many different service supported by amazon which you can use to store values in database.
As suggested above you can use RDS or DynamoDB. We have couple of sample codes which can give you idea about how to integrate dynamoDB database into your lambda code.
Please refer below link for more details:
https://codeburst.io/how-to-create-an-alexa-skill-with-node-js-and-dynamodb-3c9d5e9661
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