Hands-On Chatbot Development with Alexa Skills and Amazon Lex. Create custom conversational and voice interfaces for your Amazon Echo devices and web platforms

Sam Williams

Have you ever wondered how Alexa apps are made, how voice-enabled technologies work, or how chatbots function? And why tech giants such as Amazon and Google are investing in voice technologies? A better question is: why should I start developing on these platforms? Hands-On Chatbot Development with Alexa Skills and Amazon Lex covers all features of the Alexa Skills kit with real-world examples that help you develop skills to integrate Echo and chatbots into Facebook, Slack, and Twilio with the Amazon Lex platform.The book starts with teaching you how to set up your local environment and AWS CLI so that you can automate the process of uploading AWS Lambda from your local machine. You will then learn to develop Alexa Skills and Lex chatbots using Lambda functions to control functionality. Once you’ve come to grips with this, you will learn to create increasingly complex chatbots, integrate Amazon S3, and change the way Alexa talks to the user. In the concluding chapters, we shift our focus to Amazon Lex and messaging chatbots. We will explore Alexa, learn about DynamoDB databases, and add cards to user conversations.By the end of this book, you will have explored a full set of technologies that will enable you to create your own voice and messaging chatbots using Amazon.

GeoServer Beginner's Guide. Share geospatial data using Open Source standards - Second Edition

Stefano Iacovella

GeoServer is an opensource server writtenin Java that allows users to share, process,and edit geospatial data. This book willguide you through the new featuresand improvements of GeoServer and willhelp you get started with it. GeoServerBeginner's Guide gives you the impetus tobuild custom maps using your data withoutthe need for costly commercial softwarelicenses and restrictions. Even if you donot have prior GIS knowledge, you will beable to make interactive maps after readingthis book.You will install GeoServer, access your datafrom a database, and apply style points,lines, polygons, and labels to impress sitevisitors with real-time maps. Then youfollow a step-by-step guide that installsGeoServer in minutes. You will explorethe web-based administrative interfaceto connect to backend data stores suchas PostGIS, and Oracle. Going ahead, youcan display your data on web-basedinteractive maps, use style lines, points,polygons, and embed images to visualizethis data for your web visitors. You willwalk away from this book with a workingapplication ready for production.After reading GeoServer Beginner's Guide,you will be able to build beautiful custommaps on your website using your geospatialdata.

Kubernetes for Developers. Use Kubernetes to develop, test, and deploy your applications with the help of containers

Joseph Heck

Kubernetes is documented and typically approached from the perspective of someone running software that has already been built. Kubernetes may also be used to enhance the development process, enabling more consistent testing and analysis of code to help developers verify not only its correctness, but also its efficiency. This book introduces key Kubernetes concepts, coupled with examples of how to deploy and use them with a bit of Node.js and Python example code, so that you can quickly replicate and use that knowledge.You will begin by setting up Kubernetes to help you develop and package your code. We walk you through the setup and installation process before working with Kubernetes in the development environment. We then delve into concepts such as automating your build process, autonomic computing, debugging, and integration testing. This book covers all the concepts required for a developer to work with Kubernetes.By the end of this book, you will be in a position to use Kubernetes in developmentecosystems.

Building RESTful Web services with .NET Core. Developing Distributed Web Services to improve scalability with .NET Core 2.0 and ASP.NET Core 2.0

Gaurav Aroraa, Tadit Dash

REST is an architectural style that tackles the challenges of building scalable web services. In today's connected world, APIs have taken a central role on the web. APIs provide the fabric through which systems interact, and REST has become synonymous with APIs. The depth, breadth, and ease of use of ASP.NET Core makes it a breeze for developers to work with for building robust web APIs. This book takes you through the design of RESTful web services and leverages the ASP.NET Core framework to implement these services. This book begins by introducing you to the basics of the philosophy behind REST. You'll go through the steps of designing and implementing an enterprise-grade RESTful web service. This book takes a practical approach, that you can apply to your own circumstances. This book brings forth the power of the latest .NET Core release, working with MVC. Later, you will learn about the use of the framework to explore approaches to tackle resilience, security, and scalability concerns. You will explore the steps to improve the performance of your applications. You'll also learn techniques to deal with security in web APIs and discover how to implement unit and integration test strategies. By the end of the book, you will have a complete understanding of Building a client for RESTful web services, along with some scaling techniques.

Practical Data Wrangling. Expert techniques for transforming your raw data into a valuable source for analytics

Allan Visochek

Around 80% of time in data analysis is spent on cleaning and preparing data for analysis. This is, however, an important task, and is a prerequisite to the rest of the data analysis workflow, including visualization, analysis and reporting. Python and R are considered a popular choice of tool for data analysis, and have packages that can be best used to manipulate different kinds of data, as per your requirements. This book will show you the different data wrangling techniques, and how you can leverage the power of Python and R packages to implement them.You’ll start by understanding the data wrangling process and get a solid foundation to work with different types of data. You’ll work with different data structures and acquire and parse data from various locations. You’ll also see how to reshape the layout of data and manipulate, summarize, and join data sets. Finally, we conclude with a quick primer on accessing and processing data from databases, conducting data exploration, and storing and retrieving data quickly using databases.The book includes practical examples on each of these points using simple and real-world data sets to give you an easier understanding. By the end of the book, you’ll have a thorough understanding of all the data wrangling concepts and how to implement them in the best possible way.

Swift iOS Programming for Kids. Help your kids build simple and engaging applications with Swift 3.0

Steffen D. Sommer, Jim Campagno

This book starts at the beginning by introducing programming through easy to use examples with the Swift Playgrounds app. Kids are regularly encouraged to explore and play with new concepts to support knowledge acquisition and retention – these newly learned skills can then be used to express their own unique ideas. Children will be shown how to create their first iOS application and build their very own movie night application.

Learn pfSense 2.4. Get up and running with Pfsense and all the core concepts to build firewall and routing solutions

David Zientara

As computer networks become ubiquitous, it has become increasingly important to both secure and optimize our networks. pfSense, an open-source router/firewall, provides an easy, cost-effective way of achieving this – and this book explains how to install and configure pfSense in such a way that even a networking beginner can successfully deploy and use pfSense.This book begins by covering networking fundamentals, deployment scenarios, and hardware sizing guidelines, as well as how to install pfSense. The book then covers configuration of basic services such as DHCP, DNS, and captive portal and VLAN configuration. Careful consideration is given to the core firewall functionality of pfSense, and how to set up firewall rules and traffic shaping. Finally, the book covers the basics of VPNs, multi-WAN setups, routing and bridging, and how to perform diagnostics and troubleshooting on a network.

Nginx HTTP Server. Harness the power of Nginx to make the most of your infrastructure and serve pages faster than ever before - Fourth Edition

Martin Bjerretoft Fjordvald, Clement Nedelcu

Nginx is a lightweight HTTP server designed for high-traffic websites, with network scalability as the primary objective. With the advent of high-speed internet access, short loading times and fast transfer rates have become a necessity.This book is a detailed guide to setting up Nginx in ways that correspond to actual production situations: as a standalone server, as a reverse proxy, interacting with applications via FastCGI, and more. In addition, this complete direct reference will be indispensable at all stages of the configuration and maintenance processes. This book mainly targets the most recent version of Nginx (1.13.2) and focuses on all the new additions and improvements, such as support for HTTP/2, improved dynamic modules, security enhancements, and support for multiple SSL certificates. This book is the perfect companion for both Nginx beginners and experienced administrators. For beginners, it will take you through the complete process of setting up this lightweight HTTP server on your system and configuring its various modules so that it does exactly what you need quickly and securely. For more experienced administrators, this book provides different approaches that can help you make the most of your current infrastructure. Nginx can be employed in many situations, whether you are looking to construct an entirely new web-serving architecture or simply want to integrate an efficient tool to optimize your site loading speeds.