Configuring Skill Instance

Skill

The Skill object is the integration of all your skill logic. It is responsible for initializing SDK utilities such as the AttributesManager and ServiceClientFactory and also kick off the request handling process.

Available Methods

def invoke(self, request_envelope, context):
# type: (RequestEnvelope, Any) -> ResponseEnvelope

Skill Builders

The SDK includes a SkillBuilder that provides utility methods, to construct the Skill instance, setting custom user agent and creating lambda integration handler. It has the following structure:

class SkillBuilder(object):
    def __init__(self):
        # Initialize empty collections for request components,
        # exception handlers, interceptors.

    def add_request_handler(self, handler):
        # type: (AbstractRequestHandler) -> None
        ....

    def add_exception_handler(self, handler):
        # type: (AbstractExceptionHandler) -> None
        ....

    def add_global_request_interceptor(self, interceptor):
        # type: (AbstractRequestInterceptor) -> None
        ....

    def add_global_response_interceptor(self, interceptor):
        # type: (AbstractResponseInterceptor) -> None
        ....

    @property
    def skill_configuration(self):
        # type: () -> SkillConfiguration
        # Build configuration object using the registered components
        ....

    def create(self):
        # type: () -> Skill
        # Create the skill using the skill configuration
        ....

    def lambda_handler(self):
        # type: () -> LambdaHandler
        # Create a lambda handler function that can be tagged to
        # AWS Lambda handler.
        # Processes the alexa request before invoking the skill,
        # processes the alexa response before providing to the service
        ....

    def request_handler(self, can_handle_func):
        # type: (Callable[[HandlerInput], bool]) -> None
        # Request Handler decorator

    def exception_handler(self, can_handle_func):
        # type: (Callable[[HandlerInput, Exception], bool]) -> None
        # Exception Handler decorator

    def global_request_interceptor(self):
        # type: () -> None
        # Global Request Interceptor decorator

    def global_response_interceptor(self):
        # type: () -> None
        # Global Response Interceptor decorator

There are two extensions to SkillBuilder class, CustomSkillBuilder, and StandardSkillBuilder.

CustomSkillBuilder Class

CustomSkillBuilder is available in both ask-sdk-core and ask-sdk package. In addition to the common helper function above, CustomSkillBuilder also provides functions that allows you to register custom implementations of AbstractPersistentAdapter and ask_sdk_model.services.ApiClient classes.

class CustomSkillBuilder(SkillBuilder):
    def __init__(self, persistence_adapter=None, api_client=None):
        # type: (AbstractPersistenceAdapter, ApiClient) -> None
        ....

    @property
    def skill_configuration(self):
        # Create skill configuration from skill builder along with
        # registered persistence adapter and api client
        ....

StandardSkillBuilder Class

StandardSkillBuilder is available only in the ask-sdk package. It is a wrapper on CustomSKillBuilder with persistence_adapter as ask_sdk_dynamo.adapter.DynamoDbPersistenceAdapter and api_client as ask_sdk_core.api_client.DefaultApiClient to provide Persistence and Service Client features. It also provides optional parameters for configuring the Dynamo DB table options.

class StandardSkillBuilder(SkillBuilder):
    def __init__(self,
            table_name=None, auto_create_table=None,
            partition_keygen=None, dynamodb_client=None):
        # type: (str, bool, Callable[[RequestEnvelope], str], ServiceResource) -> None)
        ....

    @property
    def skill_configuration(self):
        # Create skill configuration from skill builder along with
        # default api client and dynamodb persistence adapter with
        # the passed in table configuration options.
        ....
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Last updated: Nov 28, 2023