The Engineering Camp Alexa Skill

Simple Alexa demo skill to ask for the next talk in the Pretalx schedule.

# install CLI and create new skill project
npm install -g ask-cli
ask new

# install dependencies
cd lambda
npm install
npm install --save-dev ask-sdk-local-debug

# to run and test implementation locally
ask run --region EU
ask dialog

Once you have everything up and running you can start with the development of the skill. Either use CoPilot or the following snippets to implement the actual business logic.

// a function to get the complete EC24 schedule from Pretalx
const https = require('https');
function get(url) {
    return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
        https.get(url, (res) => {
            let data = '';

            res.on('data', (chunk) => {
                data += chunk;
            });

            res.on('end', () => {
                resolve(data);
            });

        }).on('error', (err) => {
            reject(err);
        });
    });
}

// a function to check of the timestamp is today and in the future
function isTodayAndAfterCurrentTime(timestamp) {
    const now = new Date();
    const timestampDate = new Date(timestamp);

    return now.toISOString().slice(0,10) === timestampDate.toISOString().slice(0,10) && now.getTime() < timestampDate.getTime();
}  

Then, add the handle() callback to your main intent handler. Done. Deploy. Test.

    async handle(handlerInput) {
        let speakOutput = 'I could not find any talks for today. Please try again later.';

        await get('https://ec24.qaware.de/api/events/ec24/talks/').then(
            (data) => {
                console.log(data);
                const talks = JSON.parse(data);

                for (let i = 0; i < talks.results.length; i++) {
                    const talk = talks.results[i];
                    const timestamp = talk.slot.start;
                    if (isTodayAndAfterCurrentTime(timestamp)) {
                        speakOutput = `The next talk is ${talk.title} by ${talk.speakers[0].name}`;
                        break;
                    }
                }
            }
        ).catch(console.error);

        return handlerInput.responseBuilder
            .speak(speakOutput)
            .reprompt('Anything else I can do for you?')
            .getResponse();
    }

Maintainer

M.-Leander Reimer (@lreimer), mario-leander.reimer@qaware.de

License

This software is provided under the GPL v3 open source license, read the LICENSE file for details.