Developing for Alexa is not as difficult as you might think. Using the platform’s rich API, you can create a variety of skills for a variety of purposes. Depending on the skill, the Alexa assistant can return different voices, accents, and responses. Skills can be developed as smart home applications or as flash briefings. Custom skills are the most difficult to write, but they allow developers to define the specific requests a user can make of them.
Regardless of the language you choose, there are a few key elements to consider before writing Alexa programming code. First, you must select a skill model. There are pre-made skills available from Amazon based on common use cases. Next, you must decide on a backend service, which is the core of your business logic. Python is a great choice, as it is available for free from AWS. You can also choose a free platform for the backend, such as the Alexa Skills Kit SDK, or build a custom one yourself.
If you have extensive experience with JavaScript Object Notation, you can also use Python to create your own Alexa Skills. If you do not have any experience with JSON, you can learn more about it in our tutorial, Working With JSON Data in Python. Then, you must create two components: a skill interface and a skill service. The skill interface is the front end of your Alexa skill, processing user input and displaying a JSON object. The interface also defines intents and invocation phrases.
