In this chapter, we will expand upon the basics we learned from the previous chapter, to improve the functionality and user experience of Alexa. We'll increase the functionality by learning to use external APIs to interact with services provided by other people. Then, we'll increase the user experience by giving our chatbot some memory of the existing conversation and also using a speech synthesis markup language (SSML) to control the way that Alexa talks to the user.
To enable us to learn this, we're going to build a weather skill for Alexa. You will be able to ask for the current or five-day forecast for 200,000 cities across the world.
The following topics will be covered in this chapter:
- Accessing and interacting with an external API
- Storing session memory using session attributes
- Using SSML to control the way that...