Movie Crawl- Your Movie Partner!

Movie Crawl is a skill which tells you about movie releases in Bollywood or Hollywood which are releasing this week, next week or on specific date or duration.

Setup

To run this skill you need to do two things. The first is to deploy the code provided in movie_crawl.py in lambda, and the second is to configure the Alexa skill to use Lambda.

I. Setting up Alexa Skill in Developer Console

1. Go to the Alexa Developer Console. In the top-right corner of the screen, click the "Sign In" button. (If you don't already have an account, you will be able to create a new one for free.)

2. Once you have signed in, select the Developer Console link and then Alexa Skills Kit.

3. From the Alexa Developer Console select the Create Skill button near the top-right of the list of your Alexa Skills.

4. Give your new skill a Name, that is, 'Movie Crawl'. This is the name that will be shown in the Alexa Skills Store, and the name your users will refer to.

5. Select the Default Language. This tutorial will presume you have selected 'English (IN)'.

6. Select the Custom model under the 'Choose a model to add to your skill' section. Click the Create Skill button at the top right.

7. Choose Start from scratch from the Choose a template section and click the Choose button on the top right.

8. Build the Interaction Model for your skill

   1. On the left hand navigation panel, select the JSON Editor tab under Interaction Model. In the textfield provided, replace any existing code with the code provided in the Interaction Model. Click Save Model.
   2. Click "Build Model".

   Note: You should notice that Intents and Slot Types will auto populate based on the JSON Interaction Model that you have now applied to your skill. Feel free to explore the changes here, to learn about Intents, Slots, and Utterances open our technical documentation in a new tab.

9. If your interaction model builds successfully, proceed to the next step. If you get an error from your interaction model, check through this list:

   • Did you copy & paste the provided code correctly?
   • Did you accidentally add any characters to the Interaction Model?

II. Setting Up A Lambda Function Using Amazon Web Services

1. Go to http://aws.amazon.com and sign in to the console. If you don't already have an account, you will need to create one. Check out this quick walkthrough for setting up a new AWS account.

2. Choose "Services" at the top of the screen, and type "Lambda" in the search box. You can also find it in the list of services. It is in the "Compute" section.

3. Check your AWS region. Lambda only works with the Alexa Skills Kit in four regions: US East (N. Virginia), EU (Ireland), US West (Oregon) and Asia Pacific (Tokyo). Make sure you choose the region closest to your customers.

4. Click the "Create a Lambda function" button. It should be near the top of your screen.

5. Click on "Author from scratch". We will configure our Lambda function next.

   1. These values will only ever be visible to you, but make sure that you name your function something meaningful. "sampleMovieCrawl" is sufficient if you don't have another idea for a name.

   2. From the "Runtime" dropdown select the python version your system supports. This skill works with Python 3.6.

   3. Set up your Lambda function role. If you haven't done this before, we have a detailed walkthrough for setting up your first role for Lambda. If you have done this before, you only need to select the Existing role.

   4. Click Create function.

6. Configure your trigger. There are many different AWS services that can trigger a Lambda function, but for the purposes of this guide, we need to select "Alexa Skills Kit." from the left hand side.

   Once you have selected Alexa Skills Kit, scroll down and find the Skill ID verification section. Although you will want to paste your skill's ID in the Skill ID field, however for this tutorial, click Disable. Click the Add button in the lower right. Click the orange Save button in the top right corner.

7. Finish configuring your function. Click on your function's name (you'll find it in the middle) and scroll to the bottom of the page, you'll see a Cloud9 code editor.

   We have provided the code for this skill here. To properly upload this code to Lambda, you'll need to perform the following:

   1. This skill uses the ASK SDK for Python for development. The skill code is provided in the movie_crawl.py, and the dependencies are mentioned in requirements.txt. Download the contents of the lambda/py folder.

   2. On your system, navigate to the lambda folder and install the dependencies in a new folder called “skill_env” using the following command:

      pip install -r py/requirements.txt -t skill_env
      

   3. Copy the contents of the lambda/py folder into the skill_env folder.

      cp -r py/* skill_env/
      

   4. Zip the contents of the skill_env folder. Remember to zip the contents of the folder and NOT the folder itself.

   5. On the AWS Lambda console, change the code entry type drop-down to Upload a .ZIP file, upload the zip created in the previous step.

   6. Change the handler name to movie_crawl.handler and click on Save.

8. (Optional) Click the Configure test events dropdown menu on the top of the page.

   1. Select 'Alexa Start Session' from the 'Event Template' dropdown.
   2. Type LaunchRequest into the 'Event Name' field.
   3. Click the orange 'Create' button at the bottom of the page
   4. Click the Test button at the top of the page.
   5. You should see a light green box with the message: Execution result: succeeded at the top of the page.

9. As a final step, copy the ARN value from the top right corner of the screen. You will need this value in the next section of this guide.

III. Connecting Your Voice User Interface To Your Lambda Function

1. Go back to the Amazon Developer Portal and select your skill from the list. You may still have a browser tab open if you started at the beginning of this tutorial.

2. Select the Endpoint tab on the left side navigation panel.

3. Select the "AWS Lambda ARN" option for your endpoint. You have the ability to host your code anywhere that you would like, but for the purposes of simplicity and frugality, we are using AWS Lambda.

4. Paste your Lambda's ARN (Amazon Resource Name) into the textbox provided for Default Region.

5. Click the Save Endpoints button at the top of the main panel.

IV. Testing Your Alexa Skill

1. Open the Test Pane, by selecting the Test link from the top navigation menu.

2. Enable Testing by activating the Test is enabled for this skill slider. It should be underneath the top navigation menu.

3. To validate that your skill is working as expected, invoke your skill from the Alexa Simulator. You can either type or click and hold the mic from the input box to use your voice.

   1. Type "Open" followed by the invocation name you gave your skill in Step 1. For example, "Open movie crawl".
   2. Use your voice by clicking and holding the mic on the side panel and saying "Open" followed by the invocation name you gave your skill.
   3. If you've forgotten the invocation name for your skill, revisit the Build panel on the top navigation menu and select Invocation from the sidebar to review it.

4. Ensure your skill works the way that you designed it to.

   • After you interact with the Alexa Simulator, you should see the Skill I/O JSON Input and JSON Output boxes get populated with JSON data. You can also view the Device Log to trace your steps.
   • If it's not working as expected, you can dig into the JSON to see exactly what Alexa is sending and receiving from the endpoint. If something is broken, AWS Lambda offers an additional testing tool to help you troubleshoot your skill.