Amazon email re Alexa interface?

[Ron Haley]

Hello,
 
Your AWS Account XXXXXXXXXXXXXX currently has 1 Node.js v0.10 functions that were active since March 06 2017. All Node.js v0.10 functions in your account (active or otherwise) must be migrated to Node.js v4.3 or they will be cease to operate on April 30th, 2017. AWS Lambda is deprecating the Node.js v0.10 runtime, and invocations on Node.js v0.10 functions will fail after this date.
 
Why is this happening?
The Node Foundation declared the End-of-Life (EOL) of Node.js v0.10 on Oct 31st 2016[1], which means that it has stopped receiving bug fixes, security updates and performance improvements. We recommend moving onto a version with life time support (LTS) supported with AWS Lambda today (Node v 4.3). We will continue to expand the list of available Node versions in future releases.
 
What has been done to date?
AWS Lambda announced Node.js v0.10 deprecation on November 2nd 2016 [2] and turned off the ability to create new functions using this runtime on January 11th 2017.
 
What do you need to do?
You must migrate all your Node.js v0.10 functions to Node.js v4.3 before April 30th 2017.
 
Your Node.js v0.10 functions will continue to work until April 30th 2017 as-is and support all features including making updates to code and configuration. This is to keep your production workloads running as usual and to provide time to execute the migration. After April 30th 2017, invocations to your Node.js v0.10 functions will fail and return an error.
 
Where can I get more information?
For more information on migrating to Node.js 4.3 on AWS Lambda, please see the "Transitioning Lambda Function Code to Node.js Runtime v4.3" section of our documentation in the AWS Lambda Developer Guide [3] and the AWS Lambda Forums [4].
 
For general information on Node v4.3 and migrating to it from Node v0.10, please see the Node community documentation related to this topic [5] [6].
 
For account specific information, e.g., to list all the functions in your account, please use the AWS CLI. Sample commands for a Unix/Bash environment are shown below:
 
# list counts of all functions Node.js functions aws lambda list-functions --query 'Functions
[*].[FunctionName, Runtime]' | awk '{ if ( /nodejs/) print $0}' lambdafunctions.txt | sort -n | uniq -c | sort ÔÇônr
 
# list Node.js v0.10 functions names
aws lambda list-functions --query 'Functions
[*].[FunctionName, Runtime]' | grep -v nodejs4.3 lambdafunctions.txt | grep -B1 nodejs| grep , | sort
 
[1]: Node FoundationÔÇÖs announcement of EOL: https://github.com/nodejs/LTS
[2]: AWS Lambda forum post for deprecation: https://forums.aws.amazon.com/ann.jspa?annID=4345
[3]: Transitioning to new Node JS runtime: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest...js-runtime
[4]: AWS Lambda Forum: https://forums.aws.amazon.com/forum.jspa...86&start=0
[5]: Upgrading Node.js v0.10 applications: https://www.joyent.com/blog/upgrading-nodejs
[6]: Changes between v0.10 and v4: https://github.com/nodejs/node/wiki/API-....10-and-v4
 
Sincerely,
Amazon Web Services

[Dean Roddey]

I'm guessing there won't be a lot to it? I don't think the wee bit of Javascript used on the AWS side is likely to be using any amazing whizzbang stuff. So it may be no more than just changing that setting, I dunno. If I recall it's just a setting in the configuration as to what the underlying engine is, right?

[znelbok]

Just came to ask the same question.

I think you will need to type something up Dean to make it simple

[Dean Roddey]

I'm sort of guessing nothing will have to change. Node.js is just the javascript library that sits underneath your Javascript on the AWS side. It calls you when requests come in, you process them, and give some info back to be sent back. The use of Node.js is so simple in the basic Javascript used by the Echo skill that it seems sort of unlikely to me that a newer version of node.js would be too likely to break anything.

For those folks who are writing much more complicated AWS Javascript handlers for their own custom uses, you can create them to handle any sort of clients you want, it probably will be a more important thing.

You never indicate in the Javascript what version of node.js you want to use to run it. It's just one of the configuration settings when you set up the AWS side of the skill. So probably you would just go to your skill AWS configuration and where you now have Node.js 1.0 selected, they presumably have the newer version available as an option. Try just selecting the newer one, save the changes, and test the Javascript to make sure it still compiles without any errors. If so, you are probably good, try it and make sure it's still working correctly. Unless the new Node.js version has a breaking change for the simple stuff the skill is doing, it shouldn't make a difference.

It could happen of course.

[kblagron]

I went in a few weeks back when I was messing with AWS and it had that message on the site.  I just switched over to whatever it said was the current one and Alexa / CQC have been working fine.

[Dean Roddey]

OK, yeh, I figured that would be the case. It's just a handful of code. It was always possible it used something that would have been broken, but not terribly likely.