Possible to call http gets with Alexa hosted skill? - aws-lambda

Question

I have been trying without success to use http module in my Node.js endpoint to do a simple http get.
I have followed the various tutorials to execute the get within my intent, but it keeps failing with getaddrinfo ENOTFOUND in the cloudwatch log.
It seems like I am preparing the url correctly, if I just cut and past the url output into the browswer I get the expected response, and its just a plain http get over port 80.
I suspect that maybe the Alexa hosted lambda doesn't have permission necessary to make remote calls to non-amazon web services, but I don't know this for sure.
Can anybody shed any light? FYI this is the code in my lambda:
var http = require('http');
function httpGet(address, zip, zillowid) {
const pathval = 'www.zillow.com/webservice/GetSearchResults.htm' + `?zws-id=${zillowid}` + `&address=${encodeURIComponent(address)}&citystatezip=${zip}`;
console.log ("pathval =" + pathval);
return new Promise(((resolve, reject) => {
var options = {
host: pathval,
port: 80,
method: 'GET',
};
const request = http.request(options, (response) => {
response.setEncoding('utf8');
console.log("options are" + options);
let returnData = '';
response.on('data', (chunk) => {
returnData += chunk;
});
response.on('end', () => {
resolve(JSON.parse(returnData));
});
response.on('error', (error) => {
console.log("I see there was an error, which is " + error);
reject(error);
});
});
request.end();
}));
}

Answer 1

host: pathval is incorrect usage of the Node.js http module. You need to provide the hostname and the path + query string as two different options.
An example of correct usage:
host: 'example.com',
path: '/webservice/GetSearchResults.htm?zws-id=...',
(Of course, these can be variables, they don't need to be literals as shown here for clarity.)
The error occurs because you're treating the whole URL as a hostname, and as such it doesn't exist.
I suspect that maybe the Alexa hosted lambda doesn't have permission necessary to make remote calls to non-amazon web services
There is no restriction on what services you can contact from a within a Lambda function (other than filters that protect against sending spam email directly to random mail servers).