Alexa APL Video Skill Sample

Simple skill that plays a list of videos using Alexa Presentation Language.

Features:

• Shows title and subtitle for a few seconds at the beginning of each video
• Supports voice commands for stop/pause/resume/next/previous/start over
• Touching anywhere on the screen (or the action button on a FireTV remote) shows pause/previous/next buttons for a few seconds

Additional resources

• APL Video component: https://developer.amazon.com/docs/alexa-presentation-language/apl-video.html

• Default play/pause/previous/next controls from package alexa-layouts (APL 1.1): https://developer.amazon.com/fr/docs/alexa-presentation-language/apl-transport-controls-layout.html

• To keep track of playback, use APL Video play/pause/end/timeUpdate/trackUpdate handlers to send APL SendEvent commands: https://developer.amazon.com/fr/docs/alexa-presentation-language/apl-standard-commands.html#sendevent-command

• AlexaTransportControl next/previous buttons pause the video by default. Modified the default behaviour with a custom layout.

• ControlMedia next/previous/rewind autoplays on Show but not FireTV. Added a play command.

Test locally

• Run the server: cd lambda/custom && node local-debugger.js --portNumber 8080 --skillEntryFile ./index.js). You can replace node by nodemon after installing it to automatically restart the server when files change.
• Create a tunnel from a public HTTPS endpoint: ngrok http --region=eu 8080
• Update the skill endpoint