Since the release of Jovo v2, the Jovo Framework and CLI are both built in TypeScript. And although most users have still been using JavaScript (Node.js) for building Alexa Skills and Google Actions with Jovo, we have seen an increasing amount of community members build voice apps with TypeScript. With this new release of Jovo version 2.2, we want to make it even easier for the growing number of TypeScript users.
Here are all the updates and features of Jovo 2.2:
Like what we're doing? Support us with a star on GitHub
Better Support for TypeScript
The Jovo Framework code has been written in TypeScript since version 2, which already made it possible to build Alexa Skills and Google Actions with TypeScript in Jovo.
We've listened to the many questions of the growing TypeScript users in the Jovo community, and decided to make the development process easier by adding lots of improvements and offering deeper integrations into the Jovo services, like templates and docs.
Get started with Jovo and TypeScript like this:
To start working with your project, go into its directory, run the TypeScript compiler:
Then run the Jovo local development server (in a new tab if you use watch):
Take a look at additional updates that we've done for improved TypeScript coverage:
TypeScript Templates
To celebrate the newest update, we made all Jovo Templates available in TypeScript as well. For example:
To download any template, update the Jovo CLI to the newest version (also 2.2) and then use the following command:
Thanks a lot Max Ripper for helping us migrate all templates to TypeScript!
Docs
Most of our documentation also shows TypeScript sample code next to JavaScript. Just toggle between the languages to see the differences:
Improved Database Integrations
Besides TypeScript, this release also focused a lot on robustness, especially for the Jovo Database integrations, which now all have >90% test coverage.
We also added two additional helpful features for the database integrations:
Save updatedAt Timestamps
You can now save an additional column updatedAt into your database, which stores the last time the data has been updated. This is especially helpful if you want to quickly access the data of your latest users.
You can enable the option like this:
Learn more in pull request #451 by Kaan Kilic.
Caching
With the latest update, you can enable database caching. The Jovo user object will only save to the database if any data has changed.
To enable it, use the following configuration:
Learn more in pull request #446 by Kaan Kilic. Thank you, Peter Nann, for sparking this idea in the Jovo Community Forum.
Additional Features
There are a few more features that were released since the Jovo v2.1 release last month, including:
- SpeechBuilder: Accept arbitrary SSML wrapping elements by Jonathan Wan
- Jovo CMS Integration for Airtable by Kaan Kilic
- CMS: Platform-specific Responses by Ruben Aegerter
- More Unit Tests for the GoogleSheetsCMS integration by Ruben Aegerter
How to Update
To update to the latest version of Jovo, use the following commands:
Breaking Changes
Due to improved TypeScript compatibility, there is a tweak that needs to be done if you're using multiple reprompts with Google Assistant.
Any thoughts? Let us know in the comments below.