I'm building an Alexa Skill, and it requires that I store the userId of a user. I've tried to retrieve it with event.session.user.userId. However, when I call console.log(event.session.user.userId) the output is literally amzn1.ask.account.[unique-value-here]. I've looked at several similar questions, and none of them provide a clear enough answer for me.
I'm not sure if this is a bug, a developer-only thing, or if the userId is simply anonymized. If so, is there a way to get the actual userId? I imagine there would be, since Amazon has written an entire guide on it here:
https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-skills-kit/docs/linking-an-alexa-user-with-a-user-in-your-system.
However, after a long day of debugging, I'm not sure what's real and what's not anymore.
var request = require('request');
var firebase = require('firebase');
var config = {
apiKey: "my-api-key",
authDomain: "stuff...",
databaseURL: "more stuff...",
storageBucket: "even more stuff...",
};
firebase.initializeApp(config);
// Get a reference to the database
var database = firebase.database();
exports.handler = (event, context) => {
try {
// New session
if (event.session.new) {
// New Session
console.log("NEW SESSION");
}
// Launch Request
switch (event.request.type) {
case "LaunchRequest":
var url = "https://api.random.org/json-rpc/1/invoke";
var myRequest = {
"jsonrpc": "2.0",
"method": "generateStrings",
"params": {
"apiKey": "another-api-key",
"n": "1",
"length": "3",
"characters": "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789"
},
"id": 24
}
var pin;
request.post(
url,
{json: myRequest},
function (error, response, body) {
if (!error && response.statusCode == 200) {
console.log(event.session.user.userId); // **Here**, output is literally amzn1.ask.account.[unique-value-here]
pin = body.result.random.data[0];
writeUserPin(pin);
var welcome = "Welcome";
var pinStatement = "Your 3 letter or number pin is: " + processPinForSpeech(pin);
context.succeed(
generateResponse(
buildSpeechletReponse(welcome + pinStatement, true),
{}
)
);
console.log(pin);
}
else {
console.log(error);
}
}
);
console.log("LAUNCH REQUEST");
break;
// Intent Request
case "IntentRequest":
console.log("INTENT REQUEST");
break;
// Session Ended Request
case "SessionEndedRequest":
console.log("SESSION ENDED REQUEST");
break;
default:
context.fail(`INVALID REQUEST TYPE: ${event.request.type}`);
}
}
catch (error) {
context.fail(`Exception: ${error}`);
}
}
// Helpers
buildSpeechletReponse = (outputText, shouldEndSession) => {
return {
outputSpeech : {
type: "PlainText",
text: outputText
},
shouldEndSession: shouldEndSession
};
}
generateResponse = (speechletResponse, sessionAttributes) => {
return {
version: "1.0",
sessionAttributes: sessionAttributes,
response: speechletResponse
};
}
function writeUserPin(pin) {
console.log("writing stuff");
firebase.database().ref('newPins/' + pin).set({
num : ""
});
}
function processPinForSpeech(pin) {
var wordNumArr = ["zero", "one", "two", "three", "four",
"five", "six", "seven", "eight", "nine"];
processedPin = "";
for (i = 0; i < pin.length; i++){
var currentChar = pin.charAt(i);
if (isNaN(Number(currentChar))){
processedPin += currentChar + ". ";
}
else {
processedPin += wordNumArr[Number(currentChar)] + ". ";
}
}
return processedPin
}
The following is the output on the CloudWatch logs:
16:16:19
START RequestId: 48e335c5-d819-11e6-bc01-a939911adc24 Version: $LATEST
16:16:19
2017-01-11T16:16:19.639Z 48e335c5-d819-11e6-bc01-a939911adc24 NEW SESSION
16:16:19
2017-01-11T16:16:19.758Z 48e335c5-d819-11e6-bc01-a939911adc24 LAUNCH REQUEST
16:16:20
2017-01-11T16:16:20.457Z 48e335c5-d819-11e6-bc01-a939911adc24 amzn1.ask.account.[unique-value-here]
16:16:20
2017-01-11T16:16:20.457Z 48e335c5-d819-11e6-bc01-a939911adc24 writing stuff
16:16:20
2017-01-11T16:16:20.520Z 48e335c5-d819-11e6-bc01-a939911adc24 dd2
16:16:20
END RequestId: 48e335c5-d819-11e6-bc01-a939911adc24
16:16:20
REPORT RequestId: 48e335c5-d819-11e6-bc01-a939911adc24 Duration: 1005.48 ms Billed Duration: 1100 ms Memory Size: 128 MB Max Memory Used: 38 MB
