Bespoken CLI V2 – The Best Command-Line We’ve Ever Built 😎

The Bespoken software suite continues to grow. Two years ago we began helping voice developers debug and build Alexa skills and Google Actions with minimum effort. Now, we proudly present the latest version of our Command Line Interface (CLI). Bespoken CLI 2.0 includes super-powerful new features, like the bst test command, which allows you to run unit and end-to-end tests to ensure your app is working perfectly.Install or update Bespoken CLI now to benefit from these new features:

• bst test command with Virtual Device support
• Support for different locales and languages with the bst speak command
• Support for V6+ Node.js Lambdas with bst proxy
• Support for Entity Resolution on slots withbst utter and bst intend
• New Jest reports for bst test

All about bst test

The impactful new feature of Bespoken CLI 2.0 isbst test which allows you to do unit and end-to-end tests to your voice apps by running simple and thorough test script files created with our YAML based syntax – minimum coding required.

What is unit-testing?

Bespoken unit-testing ensures your code is working correctly. Our Virtual Alexa library emulates the Alexa Voice Service (AVS) and creates JSON objects that are sent to your skill, locally, on your laptop. With Virtual Alexa and our YAML-based test script syntax, it’s easy to create unit test scripts for your voice app. With it, you can develop, test and debug with ease, all without deploying! Check this set up instructions to know how to start.

What is end-to-end testing?

End-to-end testing (aka Functional testing) is the natural complement to unit-testing, as it puts the emphasis on testing the system as a whole as opposed to testing pieces in isolation. Like unit-testing, you create simple but powerful test scripts based on our simple YAML syntax. The utterances in the scripts are turned into audio (TTS), sent to Alexa Voice Service (AVS) through Bespoken Virtual Device and then we convert AVS’s responses back to text (STT), which are finally compared with the expected result you defined on your end-to-end test script.

End-to-end testing is critical to ensure the quality of your voice app as well as rigorously test the interaction model behavior – and also gets you more 5-star reviews.

Here is a sample of a unit-test script:

And here a sample of an end-to-end test script:

Both are at your fingertips with the new version of Bespoken CLI.

Our unit-tests are now included in the Alexa samples and tutorials – check them out!

• Fact Skill
• Skill Sample NodeJS Audio Player (single stream)
• Skill Sample NodeJS Audio Player (multiple streams)
• College Finder
• More to come soon!

And Bespoken CLIstill has all the great features you know and love, like:

• bst proxy: Use this command to execute your skill code locally. Very helpful to speed up your development process (you no longer have to redeploy your code after every update, instead, Alexa will communicate with your local machine). It also allows you to debug your skill with your favorite IDE like VSCode or Webstorm.

• bst launch, bst utter and bst intend: Launch command invokes your skill locally, then with utter command you interact (verbosely) with your skill from your command line and without talking (note: we take each utterance and turn it into a JSON payload as if it was coming from Alexa). Use intent command to make intent requests for your service as if they were coming from Alexa.

• bst speak: Use this command to “talk” with your skills or actions from the command line – without a device and without speaking aloud. Alexa developers, the speak command uses the real Alexa Voice service (AVS) to let you interact directly with Alexa, just like if you were speaking.
• Jest reports for bst test: configure our CLI to use other Jest reports only if you want to use something other than our HTML reports.

Enjoy now the latest version of the Bespoken CLI! And follow us on twitter to stay up-to-date with our newest work.