Virtual assistants are becoming the new norm when it comes to daily life, with Amazon’s Alexa being the leader in the space. As a developer, not only do you need to make web and mobile compliant applications, but you need to be able to support virtual assistants like Alexa. However, the process isn’t quite the same between the platforms. How do you handle requests? Where do you store your data and work with it to create meaningful responses with little delay? How much of your code needs to change between platforms? In this session we’ll see how to design and develop applications known as Skills for Amazon Alexa powered devices using the Go programming language and MongoDB.

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Ride B
Developing Alexa Skills with MongoDB & Golang
SANFRANCISCO

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Ken W. Alger
Developer Advocate at MongoDB
SANFRANCISCO

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Amazon Web Services (AWS) is not a requirement, it is a convenience.
Something to Note

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$200.00 in MongoDB Atlas credits with ALGER200
Something to Note

5. The Alexa Virtual Assistant
Hardware, Skills, and the Flow of Events

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Amazon Alexa Powered Devices

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Amazon Alexa Powered Devices

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What is an Alexa Skill?

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Alexa, ask Nest to set the thermostat to 75 degrees
Alexa, ask Uber to request a ride
Alexa, ask WebMD for the side effects of Tylenol
Using Alexa Skills

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Alexa performs a speech to text analysis
Alexa recognizes the invocation word
○ Ex: Uber, Nest, WebMD, etc.
Alexa associates the spoken command to an Intent
The Intent information with optional parameters are sent to the API
Alexa in Action

11. FaaS with AWS Lambda
Functions as a Service with Go on AWS Lambda

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The AWS Lambda SDK for Go

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“Hello World” with AWS Lambda SDK and Go

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AWS Lambda Dashboard

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Cross-Compiling Go Applications for Lambda

16. MongoDB with AWS Lambda
MongoDB with Go on AWS Lambda

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The MongoDB Go Driver

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Connecting to MongoDB with Go

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Sharing a Connection to MongoDB

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Using an Available MongoDB Connection

21. The Alexa Developer Portal
Skill Configuration, Testing, and Publishing

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Alexa Developer Dashboard

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Not the same as the Skill name.
Used to initiate Skill on an Alexa powered device.
○ Alexa, ask INVOCATION_NAME…
Should be real words that can be easily pronounced.
Should be unique to prevent Skill overlap.
Alexa Invocation Name

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An Alexa Skill has numerous Intents.
Intents are individual Skill commands or actions.
○ Ex: Get the current temperature.
○ Ex: Get the weekly forecast.
Utterances are phrases to activate an Intent.
The more utterances for an Intent, the less likely to be misunderstood.
Alexa has reserved Intents for specific functionality.
○ Ex: Asking for help using the Skill
Alexa Intents and Sample Utterances

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Sample Utterances for “AboutIntent”

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Sample Utterances with Slot Variables

27. Requests and Responses
Formatting Data Between Alexa and Lambda

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Alexa Request Payloads

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Lambda to Alexa Response Payloads

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The Unofficial Alexa SDK for Go

31. Processing Alexa Intents
Responding to Alexa Requests in Go

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“Hello World” with Alexa and Go

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“Hello Human” with Alexa and Go

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Alexa Request Payloads

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Dispatching Alexa Requests

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HelpIntent
StopIntent
CancelIntent
FallbackIntent
Reserved Alexa Intents

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Reserved Alexa Intents

38. MongoDB in an Alexa Skill
Alexa with MongoDB through Example

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Cooking with MongoDB

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Connecting to MongoDB with Go

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Sharing a Connection to MongoDB

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Dispatching Intents

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The MongoDB Recipe Schema

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The MongoDB Recipe Schema

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Alexa Request Payloads

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The `GetIngredientsForRecipeIntent` Logic

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The `GetIngredientsForRecipeIntent` Response

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The `GetRecipeFromIngredientsIntent` Logic

49. DEMO
Queue the Demo!

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https://github.com/mongodb-developer/alexa-golang-example
MongoDB Alexa Skill on GitHub

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Including MongoDB is simple with the Go driver.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is not a requirement, it is a convenience.
Invocation names should be real words that are pronounceable with most accents.
Sample utterances should exist for all possible requests.
Functions should finish executing quickly.
Summary

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$200.00 in MongoDB Atlas credits with ALGER200
MongoDB Atlas

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Alexa - developer.amazon.com/alexa
Lambda - aws.amazon.com/lambda
MongoDB Go Driver - https://docs.mongodb.com/ecosystem/drivers/go/
Twitter - @kenwalger
Getting Help

54. THANK YOU