Alexa is great when you know the sort of responses that your users are going to be saying, but what if they ask for something you aren't expecting? Even using custom slot types can be limiting, which could result in a user's request being incorrectly handled. Luckily, Amazon has introduced the Search Query slot type.
This slot type for Alexa is designed to be able to take a much wider range of values so that you can handle more requests.
We're going to add a new intent onto our existing Weather Gods skill that uses a Search Query slot type to allow users to search for places in a city. We'll be using Google Maps API to power the backend.
Go to your Alexa developer's console and open the WeatherGods skill. Add a new intent called searchIntent and we can start by creating the different slots that we'll be using. Create two slots...
