Word Cyclopedia

Word Cyclopedia - English Dictionary With Display using APL

Comment

Inspiration

I always wanted to develop a skill for Alexa devices with display. After APL was publicly launched, it was an awesome opportunity to learn it and develop Alexa Skills for devices with display.

What it does

It is an English Dictionary. Users ask this skill for meaning of an English word and it responds with meaning of that word.

How I built it

It is built using Python ask-sdk, AWS Lambda function and API. When users launch the skill, they are greeted with a welcome message and a help message. Once users ask the meaning of a word, the lambda function makes an API call and fetching meaning of that word and responds appropriately to the user.

Challenges I ran into

Since this was my first APL skill, I had to go through the documentation and examples. Since most of the examples were in Nodejs and I was developing in Python, I had to read through the codes of ASK-SDK and get the solution. Also, major challenge I ran into was for devices with round display.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I was able to develop Alexa Skill using APL, I was able to learn it which will help me develop more skills and many users are linking it,

What I learned

Ways to uses APL and how easy it is to devlop using ask-sdk

What's next for Word Cyclopedia

I'll add features for getting synonyms, antonyms, make sentences etc. Also, I'll like to add in-skill purchase option for this skill.

Built With

  • ask-cli
  • ask-sdk
  • aws-lambda
  • python
Share this project:

Updates