Alexa Skills Using Laravel

Posted on July 27, 2019 | by GigaMike

Just sharing my slides from my talk at AWSUGPH and LaravelPH July 2019 Meetup that was held last Thursday July 25, 2019 at Salarium Makati. Before I start shout out to my co-speakers Raph Marco, Mark Rosario, and Joe Palala. Kudos to our emcees Raphael Francis Quisumbing AWS Hero, Katt De Leos and Team Salarium.

To start with you can download my slides below

Slides 1-2: Sleepy? last time it was #Momoland and now #MathDanceChallenge! hahaha. Just kidding, my goal really is to let them experience to use Alexa and enjoy. Hey, I got giveaways! 😂😂😂

Slides 3-5: Intro: Title of my topic and who am I. I tried my best to make my audience laugh so i created a small skit, i guess it was boring lol. Thanks to my wife‘s idea 😠😠😠. Ako takot??? ML is my only game MagLuto, MagLaba, MagLinis, MagLaravel, MagLambda etc.!!! Special thanks to my wife for the support.

Slides 6-11: Voice search is the next thing and Alexa is everywhere. The goal is to encourage audience to start developing voice powered app specifically Alexa.

What Is Alexa? An Introduction to Amazon’s Alexa Voice Service https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOEIH2l9z7c
Voice is the new search by Gary Vaynerchuk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYoRjPpdigM
Alexa everywhere https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y-1h_C8ad8

Slides 12-14: Basic Alexa Skills. Alexa Skills architecture, wake word, intent, invocation name, and utterance. And what skills can you create.

Slides 15. Accounts you need

https://developer.amazon.com/ – This is where you set intents, invocation name, utterance and endpoint
https://console.aws.amazon.com/ – optional, you can use other host if you want.
https://alexa.amazon.com/ – your echo app. If appstore for iphone, google play for android, alexa.amazon.com is for you echo devices. Unfortunately no mobile app yet. Alexa is only 4 years old as writing.

Slide 16: Endpoint. Since we will be using Laravel, we will be using https endpoint.

Slide 17: Setting up your Web Server and Laravel. Spawn a server using AWS EC2, install your LAMP stack, setup your domain using AWS Route53 and use Certbot for free SSL/Https. Install composer and setup your Laravel.

Slides 18-19: Thanks to Marcel Pociot https://botman.io/ no need to write from scratch. Use this chatbot library to add chatbot/AlexaSkills features to your new or existing PHP/Laravel app site.

Slides 20-30: Alexa Skills Dashboard and Test. Just login to your https://developer.amazon.com/alexa/console/ask? and follow the steps.

Slide 31: Other/Tools you can use.

Slides 32-34: Other topics or advance

Demo: Alexa, ask big mike, advice about girls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbdVrtEBBR4 SSML demo
Demo: Alexa, ask big mike, add to shopping cart https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvNe09A8WSY using PHP as backend via API and nodejs (async, promise module) for AlexaSkills
Demo: Alexa, ask big mike, get nutrition facts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ewqc2v7KOik so imagine asking your refrigerator/smart appliances before preparing nutritious meal.
Demo: Alexa, ask big mike, get body mass index BMI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC8z6nv17so sample demo of AlexaSkills Sessions.

Slide 35: Questions and Thank you. If you have questions please reach us at the following:

Here are some highlights from the event. Photos credits to Katt De Leos