How would I ask the user for a list of names?

Question

I'm creating a custom Alexa skill and it need to collect a unknown number of names that the user says.

I have tried to store the names in a slot. I was able to get one name to work this way but not multiple. Right now, I am trying to ask the user for a number of people and then ask the user the names. But, I can not figure out how to get that solution to work. Also, I am trying to store the names in the session attributes.

Here is a what I have so far

    // Api call wrapped into a promise. Returns the person's email.
    return findEmployee(sessionAttributes.client, givenName)
        .then(attendee => {
            let prompt = ''
            if (attendee.value.length === 1) {
            sessionAttributes.attendees = [...sessionAttributes.attendees, attendee.value[0]]
            prompt = `${attendee.value.displayName} added to the meeting.`
            return handlerInput.responseBuilder
                .speak(prompt)
                .reprompt(prompt)
                .getResponse()
            }
         })
         .catch(err => console.log(err))

This snippet works fine with one person but how would I refactor it so Alexa will ask until a end condition is reached.

Religieuse

can you include links to the documentation you used? – Taeniafuge

Here is the technical documentation - ask-sdk-for-nodejs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html. Here is the alexa sample projects I used to get started- github.com/alexa/alexa-skills-kit-sdk-for-nodejs. – Religieuse

Answer 1

After doing some research I figured out that the answer is actually simple. To collect my names I need to loop a intent until a certain condition is meet. I can do this by checking the state of my skill in the "canHandle" function and using an if statement in my response.

Lets say that I have a slot called number that is set to a random number.

const AddNameHandler = {
  canHandle (handlerInput) {
    const request = handlerInput.requestEnvelope.request
    const attributesManager = handlerInput.attributesManager
    const sessionAttributes = attributesManager.getSessionAttributes()
    const slots = request.intent.slots

    return handlerInput.requestEnvelope.request.type === 'IntentRequest' &&
      (sessionAttributes.names < slots.number)

  },
  handle (handlerInput) {
    const request = handlerInput.requestEnvelope.request
    const attributesManager = handlerInput.attributesManager
    const sessionAttributes = attributesManager.getSessionAttributes()
    const slots = request.intent.slots
    // Collect the name
    sessionAttributes.names += 1
    if (sessionAttributes.names !== slots.number) {
      handlerInput.responseBuilder
        .speak('Say another name.')
        .reprompt('Say another name')
        .getResponse()
    } else {
      handlerInput.responseBuilder
        .speak('Got the names.')
        .getResponse()
    }
  }
}

This example will collect a list of name and if I want to fire another handler upon reaching the limit of names, I would just need to create another handler with a new condition.

Religieuse