Use aws-sdk in alexa skill

Question

I am trying to develop an Alexa skill, that fetches information from a DynamoDB database. In order to use that I have to import the aws-sdk.

But for some reason when I import it, my skill stops working. The skill does not even open. My code is hosted from the Alexa Developer Console. Here's what happens:

In the testing panel, when I input 'Open Cricket Update' (the app name), Alexa's response is, 'There was a problem with the requested skill's response'. This happens only when I import the aws-sdk.

What am I doing wrong?

index.js

const Alexa = require('ask-sdk-core');
const AWS = require('aws-sdk');
AWS.config.update({region:'us-east-1'});

const table = 'CricketData';
const docClient = new AWS.DynamoDB.DocumentClient();

const LaunchRequestHandler = {
    canHandle(handlerInput) {
        return Alexa.getRequestType(handlerInput.requestEnvelope) === 'LaunchRequest';
    },
    handle(handlerInput) {
        const speakOutput = 'Hello! Welcome to cricket update.';
        return handlerInput.responseBuilder
            .speak(speakOutput)
            .reprompt(speakOutput)
            .getResponse();
    }
};

package.json

{
  "name": "hello-world",
  "version": "1.1.0",
  "description": "alexa utility for quickly building skills",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
  },
  "author": "Amazon Alexa",
  "license": "ISC",
  "dependencies": {
    "ask-sdk-core": "^2.6.0",
    "ask-sdk-model": "^1.18.0",
    "aws-sdk": "^2.326.0"
  }
}

Ben Freiberg Ben Freiberg · Accepted Answer · 2020-03-25T14:24:59

You are missing the exports.handler block at the end of your index.js that "builds" the skill composed from your handlers, e.g.

exports.handler = Alexa.SkillBuilders.custom()
.addRequestHandlers(LaunchRequestHandler)
.lambda();

A more complete example can be found here

Use aws-sdk in alexa skill

1 Answers