How to pass text from alexa/echo to a server

Question

I want to create a simple skill which uses alexa's voice to text translation and then passes the text to a different service. This seems close to what i am looking for: https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-skills-kit/docs/alexa-skills-kit-interface-reference, but nowhere in the example request/response does it have the text form of the users request to alexa. Has someone managed to extract the text data of user voice commands, would be very helpful for me.

Answer 1

It is not easy, unfortunately and by design.

User responses are stored in word 'slots' in the interaction model. This is how Alexa parses speech and execute commands based on user utterances. Without knowing every variation of a possible word slot and writing this into your interaction model, you won't be able to store free form text in a variable and 'pass it on'.

Answer 2

It's not possible. The closest you can get there is by using the built-in slot type AMAZON.Literal (US only and deprecated) or AMAZON.SearchQuery (available in all locales). I say "closest" because SearchQuery for example requires a carrier phrase in the utterance besides the slot (it can't be there alone capturing everything).

Note that the free form capture provided by these types is less accurate than if you define a custom slot type (i.e. you know more or less what you want to capture)