APL for Audio Reference

Note: Learn how to improve your skills with APL with Build visually rich experiences using APL at the Alexa Learning Lab.

Alexa Presentation Language (APL) for Audio lets you create rich audio experiences for use within your custom skills. Use the APLA document type to define these experiences.

Use the following links to access the reference material relevant to APL for audio.

Documents

APL for audio uses the APLA Document format for sending an audio response to the device. The APLA document defines and arranges a set of audio clips. You build these audio clips from text-to-speech and audio files using APL components. All Alexa devices can play the audio response defined by these clips.

See the following topics for details about the APLA document format:

Data sources and data-binding

APL for audio uses data-binding to incorporate user-provided data, include audio resources, and conditionally inflate components based on data. To use data-binding in your document, you write data-binding expressions, which are JSON strings with an embedded ${...} substring.

See the following topics for details about data sources and data-binding for APL for audio:

Components

APL for audio uses APL components to define audio clips. For example, a Speech component defines text to convert to speech. The Audio component identifies an audio file to play. Other components let you mix and arrange the speech and audio in different ways.

All components have the same Base Component Properties.

Components that can render multiple child components also have the common multi-child component properties: Multiple Child Component Properties.

APL for audio supports the following primitive components:

You can use Filters to modify an audio component. For more details, see Filters.

Note: The combined total time for the entire audio response generated from the components can't be more than 240 seconds.

Skill request and response reference

APL for audio supports directives in the Alexa.Presentation.APLA Interface:

Alexa.Presentation.APLA Interface

Use the authoring tool for APL for audio

The developer console provides an authoring tool to build and preview APL documents. You can write your document and data sources in JSON and then play the results to preview the audio. When you are ready to connect the document to your skill, you can include a link to the document in your skill response.

For details about using the authoring tool, see Build an audio response.

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Last updated: Nov 28, 2023