Alexa API calls using Axios

#aws #javascript #node

Let’s see how we can do API calls through Alexa, using the Axios library. Although this can be done using other libraries or even the build-in fetch API.

Axios is a promise-based HTTP client that works both in the browser and in a Node. js environment.
It provides a single API for dealing with XMLHttpRequests and node’s http interface.

First, we need an Intent to invoke our function. I Will call it FetchJokesIntent it will be added from the amazon developer console, & to make our example as simple as possible let's add one utterance “I want a joke” 😊

en-US.json:

{
  "name": "FetchJokesIntent",
  "slots": [],
  "samples": [
    "i want a joke"
  ]
}

Let’s see our API helper function, but before that, the Axios dependency will be added in the package.json file

package.json:

"dependencies": {
  "ask-sdk-core": "^2.6.0",
  "ask-sdk-model": "^1.18.0",
  "aws-sdk": "^2.326.0",
  "axios": "^0.21.1"
}

logic.js:

const axios = require('axios');

module.exports.fetchJokesApi = async function fetchJokesApi() {
    let endpoint = 'http://api.icndb.com';
    let url = endpoint + '/jokes/random';

    let config = {
        timeout: 6500
    }

    try {
        let response = await axios.get(url, config);
        return  response.data;
    } catch (error) {
        console.log('ERROR', error);
        return null;
    }
}

We can log our API responses & view the logs on CloudWatch (Amazon CloudWatch is a monitoring and management service), this is an example of our response data:

An intent represents an action that fulfills a user’s spoken request.
Our intent function where we are calling the API:

index.js:

const FetchJokesHandler = {
    canHandle(handlerInput) {
        return Alexa.getRequestType(handlerInput.requestEnvelope) === 'IntentRequest'
            && Alexa.getIntentName(handlerInput.requestEnvelope) === 'FetchJokesIntent';
    },
    async handle(handlerInput) {
        let response = await logic.fetchJokesApi();
        let speakOutput = response.value.joke;

        return handlerInput.responseBuilder
            .speak(speakOutput)
            .getResponse();
    }
};

The result 😁

Now to make our function a bit interesting let's try using more API filters, and a voice input that the user can enter. We will use the predefined slot value AMAZON.SearchQuery (for words and phrases that a customer might use when searching for information. Skills that incorporate short messages, comments, search queries, and other short free-form text can now leverage this phrase slot)

let's add first the utterance and the slot with its type

en-US.json:

{
  "name": "FetchJokesIntent",
  "slots": [
    {
      "name": "UserInput",
      "type": "AMAZON.SearchQuery"
    }
  ],
  "samples": [
    "I want a joke of {UserInput}",
    "i want a joke"
  ]
}

Now our code looks like this, take the slot value, and split the text into two words (firstName & lastName) that will be passed as parameters to the API

index.js:

const FetchJokesHandler = {
    canHandle(handlerInput) {
        return Alexa.getRequestType(handlerInput.requestEnvelope) === 'IntentRequest'
            && Alexa.getIntentName(handlerInput.requestEnvelope) === 'FetchJokesIntent';
    },
    async handle(handlerInput) {
        const slotValue = handlerInput.requestEnvelope.request.intent.slots.UserInput.value;
        let filterData = slotValue.split(" ");

        let response = await logic.fetchJokesApi(filterData[0], filterData[1]);
        let speakOutput = response.value.joke;

        return handlerInput.responseBuilder
            .speak(speakOutput)
            .getResponse();
    }
};

logic.js:

const axios = require('axios');

module.exports.fetchJokesApi = async function fetchJokesApi(first, last) {
    let endpoint = 'http://api.icndb.com';
    let resource = '/jokes/random';
    let filter = `?firstName=${first}&lastName=${last}`;
    let url = endpoint + resource + filter;

    let config = {
        timeout: 6500
    }

    try {
        let response = await axios.get(url, config);
        return  response.data;
    } catch (error) {
        console.log('ERROR', error);
        return null;
    }
}