Self-hosted skill no longer receiving ITEMS_CREATED event (but still receive other types)

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Tahiri Hicham asked Mar 4, '23

Self-hosted skill no longer receiving ITEMS_CREATED event (but still receive other types)

Good evening,

Until a couple of weeks ago my skill was working fine. No interaction mode, it was just listening to ITEMS_CREATED events (addition of an item to the Alexa Lists), and acting upon it.

I am self hosting the underlying code, and I could see that two weeks ago on my apache logs I was indeed receiving requests upon adding an item, but it is not the case anymore. I have not changed anything as far as I know in the skill, the hosting, and the persmission of the skills on the alexa app.

To double check it was an issue to my certificate, domain name typo, etc, I have subscribed to SKILL_ENABLED and SKILL_PERMISSION_ACCEPTED, and I can see the request on my apache log when the corresponding event happen.

Probably what is the most interesting if someone wants to help me debugging is the following part of the manifest:

 
                 "apis" 
                 : {  
                 
                  "householdList" 
                 : {  
                 
                  "endpoint" 
                 : {  
                 
                  "uri" 
                 :  
                 "" 
                 
                  } 
                 
 }
 
                 },
 
                 "permissions" 
                 : [ 
                 
 { 
 
                  "name" 
                 :  
                 "alexa::household:lists:read" 
                 
 }, 
                 
 { 
 
                  "name" 
                 :  
                 "alexa::household:lists:write" 
                 
                  }
 
                 ],
 
                 "events" 
                 : {  
                 
                  "endpoint" 
                 : {  
                 
                  "uri" 
                 :  
                 "REDACTED" 
                 , 
                 
                  "sslCertificateType" 
                 :  
                 "Wildcard" 
                 
                  }

Thanks if you happen to have any idea that could help me debugging!

Kind regards

list api self hosted skill

10 |5000

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Answer 1 · 2023-03-13T17:16:26Z

Will@Amazon answered Mar 13, '23

Hello @Tahiri Hicham , I can confirm that after a recent fix, It is now an enforced requirement for skills with list API to implement account linking in order to continue to receive list events. This is described on public documentation: https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/smapi/steps-to-create-a-list-skill.html
Please refer to Step 3: Get access to the customer's Alexa lists
"(...) Implement account linking to associate customers who enabled your skill with their identity in your system. Your skill manifest must include an account linking object, which you can add to the manifest with the update-account-linking subcommand.
To perform account linking, your skill requires the SkillId, ClientId and ClientSecret."

Your skill should work fine with list events once you are able to implement account linking. please see bellow documentation for getting started with account linking for you skill:
https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/account-linking/implement-account-linking.html

In case you are interested you may also consider use Login with Amazon(LWA) as Oauth server https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/post/Tx3CX1ETRZZ2NPC/Alexa-Account-Linking-5-Steps-to-Seamlessly-Link-Your-Alexa-Skill-with-Login-wit

2

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Jonas Schiefner commented · Mar 18 at 05:26 PM

@Will@Amazon finding your answer was a lifesaver for me, thank you! i just dont understand why list event subscriptions are now more complicated then they need to be. This was working just fine without account linking, there is really no good reason to force us to implement it.

1 ·

Andy Whitworth Jonas Schiefner commented · Mar 19 at 07:18 PM

This is very odd, why would account linking be required for this. What was wrong with a straight permissions grant ? Seems more hurdles have been introduced.

0 ·

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