Developing Alexa Skills With Spring Boot REST Services in Mind

In this article, I’m going to explain Amazon Alexa integration with your REST application service.

Technology used:

1. Java 1.8

2. Spring Boot 2

3. Alexa Skill Kit SDK – Java

4. Amazon development account (free for one year).

What Will This Application Do With Alexa?

It’s a simple application; it will provide you the information about your policy expiration date. A user has to provide their policy date and date of birth, and Alexa will respond back.

Example:

Scenario 1: Positive Scenario

User: Alexa, Open RedX Insurance.

Alexa: Welcome to RedX Insurance. Do you want to check your policy expiry date?

User: Yes.

Alexa: Please tell me your policy number.

User: A111.

Alexa: Thank you. Please tell me your date of birth.

User: 15 December 2017

Alexa: Policy going to expire on 16-Nov-2018. Thank you.

Scenario 2: Negative Scenario

User: Alexa, open RedX Insurance.

Alexa: Welcome to RedC Insurance. Do you want to check your policy expiry date?

User: Yes.

Alexa: Please tell me your policy number.

User: A111.

Alexa: Thank you. Please tell me your date of birth.

User: 15 December 2017.

Alexa: Sorry, policy not available. Thank you.

Configuration Alexa REST Client and Microservice Sample

Step 1

Download this source from the repository/import it directly into your IDE.

Step 2

Configure a Spring microservice application in your IDE.

File -> Import->Existing Maven Project

Step 3

Configure the Alexa REST Client application in the IDE.

File -> import->Existing Maven Project

Step 4

We're using a MySQL database, so run this db.sql script.

Alexa REST Client Code Configuration Process

Step 1

Here is the reference application.

Step 2

Get my sample file from my GitHub, and you will see the sample application.

Step 3

Import the Alexa application in Eclipse.

Step 4

Set up the welcome message in the Alexa application:

AWS Free Account Creation Steps

Step 1

Click here and create a free account.

Step 2

Pass valid information and click continue.

Step 3

We're going to use a Professional account type. AWS free accounts are available for the USA region, so please set your country as USA.

Step 4

Click Create Account and continue.

Step 5

You'll need to pass credit card information. They won’t bill you for this step. After one year, they will ask you to select a plan. So, for one year, you can use this account and develop your Alexa projects.

Step 6

Log into the developer console:

Step 7

Start an Alexa skill:

Step 8

Create the skill:

Step 9

Create a new skill and name it RedXAlexaINsurance:

Step 10

Select Custom Model to add to your skill:

Step 11

Invocation name creation:

Step 12

Create an Intent: policy number.

First, I create the Welcome Info Intent model:

Step 13

Then I created my Date of Birth Info Intent.

The Intent slot type is Amazone.Date:

Source Code : https://github.com/shrisowdhaman/alexa_applicaton/