ask-deploy

Creates needed config files and deploys using Amazon's ask-cli ask deploy

Install

• nvm use 8.10.0 - latest version supported by Lambda
• npm install -g ask-cli
• npm install -g ask-deploy

Usage

ask-deploy <env> [options]

Options:

 -t, --target <target>      deploy "lambda", "model", "skill" or "all" (default: all)
 -P, --persistFiles         do not delete generated files
 -S, --skipAudioValidation  skip audio file validation
 -v, --version              output the version number of ask-deploy
 -h, --help                 output usage information

Setup

• create config/env_name.yml
  • Lambda:

        ---
        skillName: 
        skillInvocation: 
        skillId: 
        lambdaArn:
        audioUrlPrefix:
    

  • Local:

        ---
        skillName: 
        skillInvocation: 
        skillId: 
        localUri:
        audioUrlPrefix: 
    

• models/en-US.json
  • rename to models/en-US.json.tpl
  • update invocation to "invocationName": "{skillInvocation}"
  • delete models/en-US.env_name.json files
• skill.json
  • rename to skill.json.tpl
  • update name to "name": "{skillName}"
  • update endpoint to "endpoint": {endpointObj}
  • delete skill.env_name.json files
• .gitignore
  • add:

    # ask-cli config folder
    .ask
    /models/en-US.json
    /skill.json
    /config/*.yml
    !/config/dev.yml
    !/config/prod.yml
    

• delete .ask directory

Audio URL Validation

Incorporating audio is an essential part of skill development. Audio URLs can be directly written into the strings file, however this can become a nuisance as URLs are often long. To simply this, we use the alexa-toolkit library and include our audio references in the strings file as follows: <audio>welcome.mp3</audio> . When a response is sent to the alexa-sdk, alexa-toolkit preprocess the string. It updates any audio tags by prepending a URL (defined in our environment variables) resulting in a string with fully formed SSML audio tags.

When incorporating many audio tags into your strings file, it can be time consuming to verify if all the URLs are pointing to live files. To help with this, ask-deploy has a built in mechanism that verifies the existence of all audio tags within your strings file. Simply include the audioUrlPrefix variable in your configuration file, and when you run ask-deploy it will make sure all audio tags are pointing to a live remote file ensuring your skill doesn't unexpectedly crash.