README.md

#Amazon Echo Skills gem

##Summary

This gem was created to make it easy for anyone to make an alexa skill using Ruby on Rails, for faster deployment. Focus on simplicity and fast deployment. Check out amazons documentation for full understanding. Follow the tutorial below to use it. Enjoy!

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##Tutorial

###Overview

This gem handles the alexa amazon request for their server and allows the user to manipulate alexa to create new skills. Basically it has an AmazonEcho class on which you can all the methods below. After using the methods the server will respond to Amazons servers in JSON

###Methods The following methods are all instance methods for the class AmazonEcho

• alexa.question(string)
  
  Determines alexas speech response, unlike the statement method it keeps the alexa session open. One can input SSML or just a normal string in this case

• alexa.statement(string)
  
  Same as question determines alexas speech response, however ends the alexa session afterwards. Can input SSML and a string

• alexa.reprompt(string)
  
  Sets a reprompt speech for alexa, works only after a question speech and gets called 5 seconds after the question is stated and alexa has not received a voice response from the alexa user.
  Again can take a standard string or SSML

• alexa.card(type, args)
  
  The card method sets value for the card to show on the mobile app alexa. The type input is a string, either "Simple" "Standard" or "LinkedAccount". The args is a hash with the following key options: title, content, text, small_img and large_img. For more details look at the alexa docs

• alexa.session_attributes[key] = value Set alexa session value like this to use the variables over multiple intents and can be used throughout a whole alexa session.
  Make sure to do this before you call the question method.

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##Setup First add gem 'amazonecho' to your gemfile Then run the following rake command $rake amazonecho this will generate an intent_controller, and the required routes(Be careful this version overwrites all the routes). Also it requires an Intent schema and ngrok proxy to your localhost.

After that you can just write methods for each Intent, so lets say we have the "ExampleIntent" in our Intentschema, we can write a a method called example in our controller

def example(alexa)
  #write your code here
end 

Make sure to pass in the instance as the first argument(the name does not matter but it will be the instance you can call all the methods from above on). Make sure to add the name of your method to helper nethods as so:

class IntentController < ApplicationController
  skip_before_action  :verify_authenticity_token

  helper_method  :example

####An example:

 def example(alexa)
  alexa.session_attributes[:name] = "bob"
  alexa.session_attributes[:number] = 1
  alexa.question("hello").card("Standard", {title: "Yooo!", text: "Why me?", content: "How you doin?", larg_img: "http://example_url.com"})
end

To access slot variables passed in through voice commands to alexa, add them as arguments. Again names do not matter.

def example(alexa, slot1, slot2, slot3)
  if slot1 == slot2
    alexa.statement("True")
  else 
    alexa.statement("False")
end

Important: Sometimes the slots are not in the same order as your Intent schema slots because of the way amazon sends the request, doublecheck if the slots contain the information you want or switch the ordering.(Working on a solution)