This repo will provide a jumpstart on integrating Automated Insights' Wordsmith Natural Language Generation (NLG) Platform with Amazon Alexa Skills. Code in this repo is generally intended to help process requests using AWS Lambda functions but, with some minor modifications, could be used outside of Lambda as well.
- Clone or download this repo as a zip file
- Select either the full or simple directories (see below for an explanation of the differences)
- Update the lambda_function.py file with your Wordsmith credentials
- If you selected the full template, update remaining custom variables with your information (these are generally denoted by a tag that looks like
<YOUR INFORMATION HERE>) - Create a zip of lambda_function.py and the wordsmith_basic folder and upload it to the Lambda console
If this is the first time you are developing an Alexa skill, this may be an easier starting point. This template is meant to build a text response from Wordsmith. There is no functionality to support reprompting, sending cards to the Alexa mobile app, requesting help, etc. This is meant only to generate text and send back to Alexa.
The full template is meant to help enable advanced functionality such as reprompt text, sending cards to the Alexa mobile app, etc. This is not necessary to interact with Alexa but can create a more robust user experience.
Included with these templates is a wordsmith_basic library. Wordsmith has a full Python SDK available for install using pip install wordsmith. However, the full SDK has additional dependencies that may make it challenging to load to a Lambda. To help work around this, the Wordsmith Basic library allows you to generate narrative for a single row of data without any additional dependencies. The library will work with Python 2 or 3, but keep in mind that AWS Lambda only allows Python 2.7.
In some instances, it may be impossible or impractical to use a Lambda to respond to your Alexa Skills requests. The links below are intended to provide assistance with non-Lambda based response processing.
ngrok: Create a secure tunnel to localhost. You can point your Alexa Skill to your ngrok URL and have it run against a locally hosted service that you've built.
Flask: Flask is a great general purpose library to get a server up and running quickly to respond to Alexa Skills requests.
Flask-Ask: A fork of Flask developed specifically for handling Alexa Skills requests. If you do not need a fully custom solution, this is probably a great package to start with.
Wordsmith Full SDK: The full Python SDK for developing with the Wordsmith NLG Platform.