How to test the amazon alexa custom skill through your computer while in development phase?

Question

I am trying to use the sample code provided for Amazon Alexa API, and trying to run hello world / history buff examples through the computer. How do I test from my local machine, about the request and response formats. In the README file it is given to visit this website : http://echo.amazon.com/#skills, but I could see nothing there as it mentions more about connecting to the device. I dont have the device, but I would like to test things locally through my laptop.

Answer 1

We have a tool that we built specifically for this purpose: https://bespoken.tools/blog/2016/08/24/introducing-bst-proxy-for-alexa-skill-development

Requests and responses from Alexa will be sent directly to your development laptop, so that you can quickly code and debug without having to do any deployments. We have found this to be very useful for our own development.

Our Github project is here: https://github.com/bespoken/bst

We are also adding other useful commands for Alexa development.

Answer 2

Use http://ngrok.com

See my video for a tutorial:

https://youtu.be/eC2zi4WIFX0?t=108