chastikey-alexa

This is a simple skill that anyone can deploy to a server and then use Alexa "developer" skills to add it to their personal device.

Then you can say something like

Alexa ask chastikey for status

and it will reply with a list of your locks, and how long they've run for.

Setup is a little complicated, because we're playing with developer mode.

Prerequisites:

A server with a DNS name and a TLS certificate. This code does not do TLS itself, so a TLS proxy webserver is needed (I use Apache; see below).

An account with the Chastikey app

An API key and secret, generated from the Chastikey app, required to talk to v0.5 of the API.

GoLang dependencies:

I use the following modules (go get them)

github.com/mikeflynn/go-alexa/skillserver
github.com/tkanos/gonfig

These have other dependencies that may need to be satisfied. At the time of writing that includes

github.com/gorilla/mux
github.com/urfave/negroni

Build the code

go build -o chastikey *.go

Or use the Makefile

Testing the API configuration

You need to build a config file in $HOME/.chastikey

If the file doesn't exist then you'll get an error such as:

% ./chastikey 
Using configuration file /home/bdsm/.chastikey
Skill ID is not defined.  Aborted

On Windows it will look for %HOMEDIR%%HOMEPATH% or %USERPROFILE. On Linux/MacOS it will look in $HOME. Examples may be:

C:\Documents and Settings\bdsm\.chastikey
C:\Users\bdsm\.chastikey
/Users/bdsm/.chastikey
/home/bdsm/.chastikey

It needs four values:

SkillID   -- this is the skill ID from the Alexa Console (see later)
ApiID     -- this is your Chastikey API Key generated from the App
ApiSecret -- this is your Chastikey API Secret generated from the App
Username  -- this is your DiscordID from the Chastikey Discord server

You can join the Discord server from the menu at Chastikey app. You can find your DiscordID from the support docs

eg

% cat ~/.chastikey
{
  "SkillID":"amzn1.ask.skill.12345678-9abc-def0-1234-56789abcdef0",
  "ApiID":"1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuv",
  "ApiSecret":"1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuv",
  "UserName":"yourdiscordid"
}

Can test the code talks to the API from the CLI

% ./chastikey status
Using configuration file /home/bdsm/.chastikey
Calling listlocks.php
You have 1 lock.  Lock 1 is held by keyholder, and has been running for 81 days 10 hours 24 minutes 20 seconds.  

Setting up the reverse proxy

This code does NOT do https itself; it's http on port 3001. So you need have a HTTPS reverse proxy (eg nginx) in front of it.

It has a handler for /echo/chastikey. When the server is running you can test with something like

% curl localhost:3001
404 page not found

% curl localhost:3001/echo/chastikey
Not Authorized

For the reverse proxy I use Apache with TLS and Proxy rules, such as

ProxyPass        /alexa-chastikey/  http://myserver:3001/echo/ retry=0
ProxyPassReverse /alexa-chastikey/  http://myserver:3001/echo/

Note the echo/ part means we don't need to add that to the Amazon config later

That allows me to have

https://my.server.example/alexa-chastikey/chastikey

as the Amazon endpoint Amazon will use.

(If you follow the rewrite this becomes myserver:3001/echo/chastikey and so you can see the /echo/chastikey requirement is met)

I do it this way because I have a single webserver with multiple rules that can handle lots of different skills.

Setting up the Amazon side.

This is the hardest part of the setup, and something that you'll probably need to do a dozen times before it works! I can't really help here.

You need to do this from the Amazon Developer portal

https://developer.amazon.com/alexa/console/ask

Build a new application.

The file README.json provides a lot of stuff for the build/intent model. We only have one command "status" so it's pretty simple.

Ensure the endpont is https (not Lambda)

URL needs to be https; eg https://my.server.example/alexa-chastikey/chastikey

Make sure the SSL cert stuff is defined properly. I use a wildcard cert from LetsEncrypt so I pick "subdomain of wildcard".

From the developer dashboard you can find the Skill ID. This is the value that you need to put into the .chastikey configuration file.

Once the config file is updated you can run the application; it will start displaying log messages

% ./chastikey
Using configuration file /home/bdsm/.chastikey
[negroni] listening on :3001

Debugging

One of the main problems you'll get is the error messages are generic. If you get any of the stuff wrong anywhere then you'll normally get a very unhelpful "There was a problem with the requested skills response".

But if you see log entries appear in this file then you've probably got the communication path set properly!

• So try to connect to the port 3001 server. That will verify the server is running

• Try to connect to the https URL defined in the Alexa skill. That will verify TLS is working and forwarding traffic properly.

Everything else is likely in the developer console!

License

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.