advice on architecture for new user/entitlement checks in Bixby - bixby

Question

I am getting ready to add a couple of persistence features to Bixby and want some advice on how to architect it. Specifically, I am going to add
1) check if user is new user
2) if existing user, check entitlements to content packages, each package has a string identifier
These are silent checks, they should be carried out prior to any utterance interaction.
My first thought was to create an action called Initialize with model, action, and code but no view and to call it as a require at the top of each action script. does that make sense? are there some good examples of how to do this?

Answer 1

This wasn't a very stack overflow-friendly question so I plowed ahead on my own. What I wound up doing to begin with is simply adding some code to the default-action.
module.exports.function = function (searchTerm, $vivContext) {
// check if user is already registered
// create query terms
bixbyUserId = $vivContext.bixbyUserId
const checkuserurl = properties.get("config", "baseUrl") + 'example-user-data'
const checkuserquery = {
apikey: properties.get("secret", "apiKey"),
q: "{\"" + properties.get("config", "userIdField") + "\":\"" + bixbyUserId + "\"}"
}
const checkuseroptions = {
format: "json",
query: checkuserquery,
cacheTime: 0
}
// submit query checking if user is in db
const checkuserresponse = http.getUrl(checkuserurl, checkuseroptions)
// if user exists in restdb, accept the userData
if (checkuserresponse && checkuserresponse.length === 1) {
var userData = checkuserresponse[0][properties.get("config", "userDataField")]
userData.$id = checkuserresponse[0]["_id"]
userData.bixbyuserid = bixbyUserId
console.log ('user exists and user id is', userData.bixbyuserid)
}
else {
// if user doesn't exist, create new user id in db with UserData
var userData = {}
userData.newuser = true
const createuserbody = {}
createuserbody[properties.get("config", "userIdField")] = bixbyUserId
createuserbody[properties.get("config", "userDataField")] = JSON.stringify(userData)
const createuserresponse = http.postUrl(checkuserurl, createuserbody, checkuseroptions)
console.log("user didn't exist in restdb so created one")
}
// get AltBrains
Needs testing and could benefit from a logic check.