SMAPI Integration

Today I'm super excited to announce the new SMAPI (beta) integration on apl.ninja. With the SMAPI integration, you can connect your documents stored on APL Ninja to your skills and sync them with the Alexa Developer Console.

Hint: The screenshots in the blog post differ slightly from the current views.

How to get started

To enable SMAPI integration, please log in with your Amazon Developer account and visit the SMAPI Integration page. You can find the page in the menu in the upper right corner of the screen.

On the SMAPI integration page itself you will find a small description what exactly SMAPI is and which permissions APL Ninja needs. Use the "Grant SMAPI access" button to continue. Don't worry, the button opens an Amazon popup where you have to grant access.

The SMAPI integration requires the "alexa::ask:skills:readwrite" scope to access your skills and sync your documents. Learn more about it here.

Once you have granted access, the synchronization process starts. All vendors including the skills in which you are an administrator or developer are taken over. You can synchronize new vendors or skills at any time.

As soon as the vendors and skills have been synchronized, the page should look like this.

Toast notifications keep you updated with the latest progress of the synchronization.

Using the 3 dots following a vendor or skill, you can run the manual sync option mentioned earlier or delete the vendor/skill. (delete functionality will be available at a later stage.)

As soon as the existing APL documents of a skill have been synchronized, a separate section appears on the "My Documents" page for each skill, similar to the already known "private and public documents".

The settings for an APL document to which you have linked a skill has also changed to the settings of local APL documents on APL Ninja. An APL document that has been linked to a skill can no longer be saved "publicly", and all irrelevant fields have been removed. In addition, there is now another menu item "SMAPI Integration" which can be used to select the skill to which a document should be linked.

An APL document is automatically synchronized with your skill when you save it in the editor. However, it is also possible to synchronize all documents linked to a skill on APL Ninja with the Alexa Developer Console via the SMAPI Integration page.

The SMAPI integration currently still has a small flaw: If changes are made in the Alexa Developer Console, but the interaction model is not rebuilt afterwards, these changes will be lost during the next synchronization.

Well, that's it. Have fun synchronizing your APL documents with the Alexa Developer Console! If you liked the post, leave a comment and ❤️.