How do I query an Alexa device for a parameter? - amazon-web-services

I am creating a custom skill that will query a custom device for a parameter. In this case, it is the voltage.
The device is a node on node red so it is not a physical device but a virtual one.
The device will be linked to my account. Here is what I am thinking that the workflow would be:
Hello alexa ask test app what is the motor voltage?
I get a session request that goes to my custom intent and executes the corresponding function on the lambda server
----- here is the part that is fuzzy ----
Using some device ID, the lambda server sends out a request to the virtual device
The node for the device gets this request (mostly likely some sort of JSON object), parses it and sends back out the requested parameter that is stored on the Node Red server (For the sake of the discussion lets say that it is a constant number that is on the server)
Lambda server gets this response and forwards it to the Alexa service
Alexa - The voltage of the motor is twelve volts
So basically, how do I do this? Is this the correct workflow for Alexa or is there a different workflow? What components (besides the components needed for Alexa to run) will I be needing? I believe that I can get the ID of the device in the handler_interface.

Related

Google Ad Manager - Custom client parameters in third-party tracking URLs

I would like to send a pixel for certain ad playback events - a setup similar to what is visible on this screenshot from some tutorial found on the web: example screenshot with custom third party URLs. So for example, a pixel should be sent when the ad starts playing, reaches first, second and third quartile, and when the ad finishes.
The pixel is sent to an audience measurement platform, which requires that a unique device identifier has to be send as a parameter in the tracking url. I am aware of tracking macros and ADVERTISING_IDENTIFIER_PLAIN, but we need to provide a unique id form other players as well (e.g. HTML5).
Is there a way to somehow communicate a custom value (in this case a unique device identifier) from the player, so that it can be passed to the third party tracking URL? If yes, how can it be achieved? IMA SDK for client-side ads is used in all our players.

Communicate internally between Google Cloud Functions?

We've created a Google Cloud Function that is essentially an internal API. Is there any way that other internal Google Cloud Functions can talk to the API function without exposing a HTTP endpoint for that function?
We've looked at PubSub but as far as we can see, you can send a request (per say!) but you can't receive a response.
Ideally, we don't want to expose a HTTP endpoint due to the extra security ramifications and we are trying to follow a microservice approach so every function is its own entity.
I sympathize with your microservices approach and trying to keep your services independent. You can accomplish this without opening all your functions to HTTP. Chris Richardson describes a similar case on his excellent website microservices.io:
You have applied the Database per Service pattern. Each service has
its own database. Some business transactions, however, span multiple
services so you need a mechanism to ensure data consistency across
services. For example, lets imagine that you are building an e-commerce store
where customers have a credit limit. The application must ensure that
a new order will not exceed the customer’s credit limit. Since Orders
and Customers are in different databases the application cannot simply
use a local ACID transaction.
He then goes on:
An e-commerce application that uses this approach would create an
order using a choreography-based saga that consists of the following
steps:
The Order Service creates an Order in a pending state and publishes an OrderCreated event.
The Customer Service receives the event attempts to reserve credit for that Order. It publishes either a Credit Reserved event or a
CreditLimitExceeded event.
The Order Service receives the event and changes the state of the order to either approved or cancelled.
Basically, instead of a direct function call that returns a value synchronously, the first microservice sends an asynchronous "request event" to the second microservice which issues a "response event" that the first service picks up. You would use Cloud PubSub to send and receive the messages.
You can read more about this under the Saga pattern on his website.
The most straightforward thing to do is wrap your API up into a regular function or object, and deploy that extra code along with each function that needs to use it. You may even wish to fully modularize the code, as you would expect from an npm module.

Inter-Process communication in a microservices architecture

we are moving from monolithic to microservice architecture application, we're still in planning phase and we want to know what is the best practices of building it.
suppose we have two services :
User
Device
getUserDevices(UserId)
addDevice(DeviceInfo, UserId)
...
Each user has multiple devices
what is the most common, cleaner and proper way of asking the server to get all user devices ?
1- {api-url}/User/{UserId}/devices
needs another HTTP request to communicate with Device service.
for user X, get linked devices from User service.
// OR
2- {api-url}/Device/{UserId}/devices
for user X, get linked devices from Device service.
There are a lot of classic patterns available to solve such problems in Microservices. You have 2 microservices - 1 for User (Microservice A) and 1 for Device (Microservice B). The fundamental principle of a microservice is to have a separate database for each of the microservice. If any microservice wants to talk to each other (or to get data from another microservice), they can but they would do it using an API. Another way for communication between 2 microservices is by events. When something happens in Microservice A, it will raise an event and push it to a central event store or a message queue and Microservice B would subscribe to some or all of the events emitted by A.
I guess in your domain, A would have methods like - Add/Update/Delete a User and B would have Add/Update/Delete a device. Each user can have its own unique id and other data fields like Name, Address, Email etc. Each device can have its own unique id, a user id, and other data fields like Name, Type, Manufacturer, Price etc. Whenever you "Add" a device, you can send a POST request or a command (if you use CQRS) to Device Microservice with the request containing data about device + user-id and it could raise an event called "DeviceAdded". It can also have events corresponding to Update and Delete like "DeviceUpdated" and "DeviceRemoved". The microservice A can subscribe to events - "DeviceAdded", "DeviceRemoved", and "DeviceUpdated" events emitted by B and whenever any such event is raised, it will handle that event and denormalize that event into its own little database of Devices (Which you can call UserRelationships). In future, it can listen to events from other microservices too (so your pattern here would be extensible and scalable).
So now to get all devices owned by a user, all you have to do is make an end-point in User Microservice like "http://{microservice-A-host}:{port}/user/{user-id}/devices" and it will return you a list of the devices by querying for user-id in its own little database of UserRelationships which you must have been maintaining through events.
Good Reference is here: https://www.nginx.com/blog/event-driven-data-management-microservices/
it may really be either way, but to my liking, I would choose to put it under /Devices/{userId}/devices as you are looking for the devices given the user id. I hope this helps. Have a nice one!
You are requesting a resource from a service, resource being a device and service being a device service.
From a rest standpoint, you are looking for a resource and your service is providing various methods to manipulate that resource.
The following url can be used.
[GET] ../device?user_id=xyz
And device information can be fetched via ../device/{device_id}
Having said that, if you had one service that is providing for both user and device data than the following would have made sense.
[GET] ../user/{userId}/device
Do note that this is just a naming convention and you can pick what suits best for you, thing is pick one and hold onto it.
When exposing the api consistency is more important.
One core principle of the microservice architecture is
defining clear boundaries and responsibilities of each microservice.
I can say that it's the same Single Responsibility Principle from SOLID, but on macro level.
Сonsidering this principle we get:
Users service is responsible for user management/operations
Devices service is responsible for operations with devices
You question is
..proper way of asking the server to get all user devices
It's 100% responsibility of the Devices service and Users service nothing know about devices.
As I can see you thinking only in routing terms (yes API consistency is also important).
From one side the better and more logical URL is /api/users/{userId}/devices
- you try to get user's devices, these devices belong to user.
From other side you can use the routes like /api/devices/user/{userId} (/api/devices/{deviceId}) and that can be more easily processed
by the routing system to send a request to the Devices service.
Taking into account other constraints you can choose the option that is right for your design.
And also small addition to:
needs another HTTP request to communicate with Device service.
in the architecture of your solution you can create an additional special and separate component that routes the requests to the desired microservice, not only direct calls are possible from one microservice to another.
You should query the device service only.
And treat the user id like a filter in the device service. For eg: you should search on userid similar to how you would search device based on device type. Just another filter
Eg : /devices?userid=
Also you could cache some basic information of user in device service, to save round trips on getting user data
With microservices there is nothing wrong with both the options. However the device api makes more sense and further I'll prefer
GET ../device/{userId}/devices
over
GET ../device?user_id=123
There are two reasons:
As userId should already be there with devices service you'll save one call to user service. Otherwise it'll go like Requester -> User service -> Device Service
You can use POST ../device/{userId}/devices to create new device for particular user. Which looks more restful then parameterized URL.

Getting and Verifying Source of Transaction in Hyperledger Fabric

I am currently using Fabric together with Composer as a platform to test secure transaction of assets or data whilst keeping validity intact
Right now I'm on a use case where a node sends an asset over to another node, but before that the asset will go through a middle node for some changes before ending with the receiving node. Is there any way for me or the receiving node to verify that this asset came from the first node?
Eg: X intends to send a message to Z, but before that he sends to message to Y, Y simplifies the message and sends it to Z. Is there any way for Z to check that the message originated from X?
I think you could use the getCurrentParticipant() call from within your TP function to verify the identity that submitted the transaction. Does that help?

bacnet alarm summary & acknowledgement

I am developing a touch screen device that gets data from field devices using the BACnet protocol.
I'm currently developing some pages that show devices alarms. As per BACnet documentation, there is a service named AlarmSummary. When invoke (as a client) this service, field device answers with a list that include, for each alarm, the following information
object identifier
alarm state
list of acked transitions
Now my question is: how can I acknowledge an alarm that I read through the GetAlarmSummary service considering that the AckAlarm service requires the following information to be provided
Event Object Identifier
Event State
Acknowledged Time Stamp
Acknowledgment Source
Time Of Acknowledgment
Thanks in advance
In short, you can't or you read the required information in a second step. Use the GetEventInformation service to obtain information about active event states. It returns all information required to acknowledge alarms.
Note, that the execution of GetAlarmSummary and GetEnrollmentSummary is deprecated, see future Addendum 135-2012av. Regardless, initiation will be still required if a device doesn't support AE-INFO-B.