A modular NodeJS based server for your Amazon Echo skills using the Alexa Skills Kit.

##Table of Contents

• Getting Started
  • Creating an Account
  • Create Your First Skill
  • Getting Started With The Alexa Server
• How it Works
• Compatible Modules
• Create Your Own Module
• Deploying with Heroku
• Credits

##Getting Started In this section we will walk you through everything you need to get started with creating skills for your Amazon Echo.

####Creating an Account To become an Alexa developer you must sign up HERE

####Create Your First Skill

Step 1

Once you have a developer account setup and have logged in, Click on Get Started under Alexa Skills Kit

Step 2

Click Add A New Skill

Step 3

Fill out the Create A New Skill form

Step 4

Add an Intent Schema and Utterance

Step 5

Test your new skill.

NOTE: You will have to complete Getting Started with Server before you can test your new skill.

####Getting Started with Server

1. Clone the app git clone https://github.com/bbrookfield/node-alexa-server
2. Install modules npm install
3. Run the application PORT=9000 node app.js
4. If no errors occur then you can begin adding modules or create your own module

##How this application works The alexa-server application is an express webserver that routes Amazon requests to various app modules located in your app_modules directory. Each of these modules creates a global function that is called by the express router based on the URL path.

For example a request to https://[your server URL]/thermostat would route the request to global.thermostat

##Adding modules

1. To add modules to your server, you need to create an app_modules directory in the root directory
2. Then clone the module into your app_modules directory

• example: git clone https://github.com/bbrookfield/alexa-radiothermostat

##Compatible modules (If you create one, let me know and I will add it to the list)

1. alexa-sampleskill - This is a sort of "Hello World" module to help get you started
2. alexa-directTV - For changing channels on your DirectTV
3. alexa-radiothermostat - For getting the current temperature and changing the temperature on your Radio Thermostat

##Create Your Own Module TODO: Add instructions for creating your own module

##Using Heroku I have included a procfile if you choose to deploy to heroku

##Thanks alexa-app - by Matt Kruse