Run Code on Session Start about alexa-skills-kit-sdk-for-nodejs HOT 7 CLOSED

You can initialize before you call alexa.execute() in your Lambda event handler.

For example:

var Alexa = require('alexa-sdk');
exports.handler = function(event, context) {
    var alexa = Alexa.handler(event, context);
    initialize(() => {
        alexa.execute();    
    });
}

function initialize(callback) {
    // initialize your SDK here
    callback();
}

Lambda is stateless, so two requests from a single user's session may go to different containers. You shouldn't rely on checking if the session is new if you're going to depend on the SDK on subsequent requests. You can cache your SDK after initializing to conserve resources.

from alexa-skills-kit-sdk-for-nodejs.

Yes, sorry, I should be more clear. I'm not concerned about running when the Lambda session is new, but only when a request comes in from Alexa with the session.new variable set to true. Running the code as you've shown here will run the initialize function on every new Lambda request, which is not what I'm looking for.

from alexa-skills-kit-sdk-for-nodejs.

In that case, you can easily check the new session attribute in the incoming request.

var Alexa = require('alexa-sdk');
exports.handler = function(event, context) {
    var alexa = Alexa.handler(event, context);
    initialize(event, () => {
        alexa.execute();    
    });
}

function initialize(event, callback) {
    if(event.session['new']){
        // initialize your SDK here
    }
    callback();
}

You can see the JSON interface reference here.

from alexa-skills-kit-sdk-for-nodejs.

OK, that looks like it will work, thanks. What's the relationship between the special NewSession handler and doing something like this?

from alexa-skills-kit-sdk-for-nodejs.

NewSession can be defined to have different behavior depending on the current state, or can be skipped altogether. The above would run on all requests.

from alexa-skills-kit-sdk-for-nodejs.

Just out of curiosity, what analytics SDK are you using?

from alexa-skills-kit-sdk-for-nodejs.

OK, so I ended up checking the session.new as your second example demonstrates. I'm using VoiceLabs.co for the analytics.

from alexa-skills-kit-sdk-for-nodejs.