Book Image

Jumpstart Jamstack Development

By : Christopher Pecoraro, Vincenzo Gambino
Book Image

Jumpstart Jamstack Development

By: Christopher Pecoraro, Vincenzo Gambino

Overview of this book

Jamstack (JavaScript, API, and Markup) enables web developers to create and publish modern and maintainable websites and web apps focused on speed, security, and accessibility by using tools such as Gatsby, Sanity, and Netlify. Developers working with Jamstack will be able to put their knowledge to good use with this practical guide to static site generation and content management. This Jamstack book takes a hands-on approach to implementation and related methodologies that will have you up and running with modern web development in no time. Complete with step-by-step explanations of essential concepts, practical examples, and self-assessment questions, you'll begin by building an event and venue schema structure, and then expand the functionality, exploring all that the Jamstack has to offer. You’ll learn how an example Jamstack is built, build structured content using Sanity to create a schema, use GraphQL to expose the content, and employ Gatsby to build an event website using page and template components and Tailwind CSS Framework. Lastly, you’ll deploy the website to both, a Netlify server and the Microsoft Static Web Apps Service, and interact with it using Amazon Alexa. By the end of this book, you'll have gained the knowledge and skills you need to install, configure, build, extend, and deploy a simple events website using Jamstack.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)

Chapter 12: APIs – Alexa Skills

Alexa is the Amazon Virtual Assistant that can perform tasks or services for an individual, and it uses natural language processing and machine learning to convert voice input to an executable command. Alexa can provide a wide variety of services, from music playback to creating to-do lists, playing audiobooks, and providing weather, traffic, and news. Alexa is also capable of controlling many smart devices, allowing you to build an automation system for your home. An Amazon user can install skills, which are functionalities, similar to apps, that are available in the Alexa Skills Store to extend Alexa's capabilities.

In this chapter, we will build the Jumpstart Jamstack Alexa skill. A user would be able to ask for the upcoming five events. Through this example, you will be able to extend the current skill by retrieving past events, or all events, and you will also be able to create a new skill for any other application you have.

We...