I am using now is context.succeed(response_JSON);This one works for me. Even if this instructions is inside a nested function. The whole Lambda ends and return the response_JSON to Smart Home Alexa.
context.succeed()/fail()
causes the Lambda function to terminate immediately. However, I have not seen this documented in the context object docs, so it may get deprecated in later Node versions (?).
I have seen in other blogs that say callback(response_error,response_JSON). This one did not work for me. It did not return anything to Smart Home.
This one probably doesn't work for you because by default Node.js waits for the event loop to be empty before executing the callback
statement. This may be due to open network/database connection. As per the doc, set the context.callbackWaitsForEmptyEventLoop
variable to false to send the response right away.
Others just uses the return response_JSON. I have not used this one.
This should be used with async handlers. Read more about async and non-async handlers here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/nodejs-handler.html