Deploy Alexa skill to AWS Lambda with "alexa-app" dependency

Question

I wrote a simple Alexa skill. It uses "alexa-app" as dependency.

var alexa = require('alexa-app');

When I save and test my skill I get the following response

{
  "errorMessage": "Cannot find module 'alexa-app'",
  "errorType": "Error",
  "stackTrace": [
    "Function.Module._load (module.js:276:25)",
    "Module.require (module.js:353:17)",
    "require (internal/module.js:12:17)",
    "Object.<anonymous> (/var/task/index.js:4:13)",
    "Module._compile (module.js:409:26)",
    "Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:416:10)",
    "Module.load (module.js:343:32)",
    "Function.Module._load (module.js:300:12)",
    "Module.require (module.js:353:17)"
  ]
}

Is it possible to use this "alexa-app" dependency without baking it into a zip file. To make development quicker I'd prefer working with just one file in the online Lambda code editor. Is this possible?

Ron Lisle Ron Lisle · Accepted Answer · 2017-02-25T11:35:46

No, you will need to include it in a zip along with any other files. It really isn't difficult to do though. You can use the AWS CLI to simplify this.

Here is a bash script that I use on my Mac for doing this:

# Create archive if it doesn't already exist
# Generally not needed, and just a refresh is performed
if [ ! -f ./Archive.zip ];
then
  echo "Creating Lambda.zip"
else
  echo "Updating existing Lambda.zip"
fi

# Update and upload new archive
zip -u -r Lambda.zip index.js src node_modules
echo "Uploading Lambda.zip to AWS Lambda";
aws lambda update-function-code --function-name ronsSkill --zip-file fileb://Lambda.zip

In the above script, It's packaging up an index.js file along with all the files in the ./src and ./node_modules directories. It is uploading them to my 'ronsSkill' Lambda function. I use alexa-app also, and it is included in the node_modules directory by npm.

Deploy Alexa skill to AWS Lambda with "alexa-app" dependency

1 Answers