Create Your Own Mycroft Skill: Fetch Historical Events for Today

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction
2. Background Information
3. Overview of Mycroft Skill Creation
4. Finding an API for Today in History
5. Setting Up the Development Environment
6. Importing the necessary libraries
7. Making API Requests and Parsing JSON data
8. Creating a Today in History Skill
9. Modifying the Skill Code
10. Pushing the Skill to GitHub
11. Installing the Skill on Mycroft
12. testing the Skill
13. Conclusion

Introduction

🌟 Creating your own Mycroft skill can be a rewarding and engaging experience. In this article, we will delve into the process of creating a Mycroft skill that fetches historical events for the current day. We will explore the steps involved in finding a suitable API, setting up the development environment, making API requests, and implementing the skill code. By the end of this article, you will have a clear understanding of how to create and deploy your own Mycroft skill.

Background Information

📚 Mycroft is an open-source voice assistant similar to Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. With Mycroft, you can create custom skills that extend its functionalities and make it even more useful. Skills in Mycroft are like apps in a smartphone - they allow your voice assistant to perform specific tasks or provide specific information. In this article, we will focus on creating a skill that fetches historical events for the current day using an API.

Overview of Mycroft Skill Creation

🔍 Before we start building our skill, let's go over the general process of creating a skill in Mycroft. Here are the basic steps involved:

1. Finding a suitable API or data source for the desired functionality.
2. Setting up the development environment, including installing necessary libraries and tools.
3. Making API requests and parsing the received data. This step may involve using libraries like requests and handling JSON data.
4. Creating a new skill in Mycroft and modifying the skill code.
5. Pushing the skill code to a version control system, such as GitHub.
6. Installing the skill on your Mycroft device or simulator.
7. Testing the skill to ensure it performs as expected.

Finding an API for Today in History

🔎 To fetch historical events for the current day, we need a reliable API that provides this information. In our case, we found the "Today in History" API provided by Muffin Labs. This API is straightforward and returns historical events based on the current date. To access this API, we just need to make a GET request to the API's URL.

Setting Up the Development Environment

🔧 To begin developing our Mycroft skill, we need to set up our development environment. One option is to use a cloud-based development environment like Cloud9, which allows for collaboration and easy coding in the cloud. Alternatively, you can set up the development environment locally on your machine using tools like Python and the Mycroft SDK.

Importing the necessary libraries

📚 In order to make HTTP requests and handle the API response, we need to import the requests library. Fortunately, Mycroft already comes with the requests library pre-installed, so we don't have to worry about installing it separately. We can simply import it and use it to make requests to the "Today in History" API.

Making API Requests and Parsing JSON data

🌐 Once the necessary libraries are imported, we can proceed with making API requests to the "Today in History" API. We'll fetch the JSON response from the API, which contains information about historical events for the current day. With the help of the json module, we can easily parse this JSON data and extract the Relevant information for our skill.

Creating a Today in History Skill

💡 Now that we have the background information and know how to fetch historical events using the "Today in History" API, let's start creating our Mycroft skill. We'll start by creating a new directory for our skill and setting up the required files and folders.

Modifying the Skill Code

⚙️ With the basic structure of our skill in place, we can now modify the skill code to fetch and Present the historical events. We'll define the necessary functions and handlers to handle user requests for historical events. We'll also format and speak out the event using Mycroft's speech capabilities.

Pushing the Skill to GitHub

🚀 To make our skill easily accessible and shareable, we can push our skill code to a version control system like GitHub. By doing so, others can clone and use our skill, and we can also keep track of any changes or updates we make to the skill code over time.

Installing the Skill on Mycroft

📦 After pushing our skill to GitHub, we can now install it on our Mycroft device or simulator. We'll use the Mycroft Skill Manager (MSM) to install the skill from our GitHub repository. Once installed, our skill will be available for use by the Mycroft voice assistant.

Testing the Skill

✅ With our skill installed, it's important to thoroughly test it to ensure it works as expected. We can test various scenarios, such as requesting historical events for different dates, checking how Mycroft responds to invalid or unexpected user input, and verifying the accuracy of the information provided.

Conclusion

✨ In this article, we explored the process of creating a Mycroft skill that fetches historical events for the current day. We discussed the steps involved in finding an API, setting up the development environment, making API requests, and implementing the skill code. By following this guide, you should now have the necessary knowledge and tools to create and deploy your own Mycroft skills. Start bringing new functionalities and information to your Mycroft voice assistant today!

Resources:

• Muffin Labs - Today in History API