CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptnode.jsalexa-skills-kit
spicypumpkin
spicypumpkin

Reputation: 1219

Starting Alexa Skill in a specific state

Earlier I ran into the issue of Alexa not changing the state back to the blank state, and found out that there is a bug in doing that. To avoid this issue altogether, I decided that I wanted to force my skill to always begin with START_MODE.

I used this as my reference, where they set the state of the skill by doing alexa.state = constants.states.START before alexa.execute() at Line 55. However, when I do the same in my code, it does not work.

Below is what my skill currently looks like:

exports.newSessionHandler = {

    LaunchRequest () {
        this.hander.state = states.START;
        // Do something
    }

};

exports.stateHandler = Alexa.CreateStateHandler(states.START, {

    LaunchRequest () {
        this.emit("LaunchRequest");
    },

    IntentA () {
        // Do something
    },

    Unhandled () {
        // Do something
    }

});

I'm using Bespoken-tools to test this skill with Mocha, and when I directly feed IntentA like so:

alexa.intended("IntentA", {}, function (err, p)  { /*...*/ })

The test complains, Error: No 'Unhandled' function defined for event: Unhandled. From what I gather, this can only mean that the skill, at launch, is in the blank state (because I have not defined any Unhandled for that state), which must mean that alexa.state isn't really a thing. But then that makes me wonder how they made it work in the example code above.

I guess a workaround to this would be to create an alias for every intent that I expect to have in the START_MODE, by doing:

IntentA () {
    this.handler.state = states.START;
    this.emitWithState("IntentA");
}

But I want to know if there is a way to force my skill to start in a specific state because that looks like a much, much better solution in my eyes.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 1486

Answers (1)

Ben Helsey
Ben Helsey

Reputation: 26

The problem is that when you get a LaunchRequest, there is no state, as you discovered. If you look at the official Alexa examples, you will see that they solve this by doing what you said, making an 'alias' intent for all of their intents and just using them to change the state and then call themselves using 'emitWithState'.

This is likely the best way to handle it, as it gives you the most control over what state and intent is called.

Another option, assuming you want EVERY new session to start with the same state, is to leverage the 'NewSession' event. this event is triggered before a launch request, and all new sessions are funneled through it. your code will look somewhat like this:

NewSession () {
    if(this.event.request.type === Events.LAUNCH_REQUEST) {
        this.emit('LaunchRequest');
    } else if (this.event.request.type === "IntentRequest") {
        this.handler.state = states.START;
        this.emitWithState(this.event.request.intent.name);
    }
};

A full example of this can be seen here (check out the Handlers.js file): https://github.com/alexa/skill-sample-node-device-address-api/tree/master/src

I would also recommend reading through this section on the Alexa GitHub: https://github.com/alexa/alexa-skills-kit-sdk-for-nodejs#making-skill-state-management-simpler

EDIT: I took a second look at the reference you provided, and it looks like they are setting the state outside of an alexa handler. So, assuming you wanted to mimic what they are doing, you would not set the state in your Intent handler, but rather the Lambda handler itself (where you create the alexa object).

exports.handler = function (event, context, callback) {
    var alexa = Alexa.handler(event, context);
    alexa.appId = appId;
    alexa.registerHandlers(
        handlers,
        stateHandlers,
    );
    alexa.state = START_MODE;
    alexa.execute();
};

Upvotes: 1

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