Slackbotsy

Ruby bot library for Slack chat, inspired by the Campfire bot http://github.com/seejohnrun/botsy.

Working example

This repo and gem provide a library for implementing slack botsy using the web framework of your choice. For example, botsy could be embedded into an existing Rails app to provide access to a database from slack.

For a fully-implemented and ready-to-deploy standalone bot, using slackbotsy and sinatra, please proceed over to https://github.com/rlister/slackbotsy_example. You will find full instructions to configure and deploy your own bot.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'slackbotsy'

And then bundle:

bundle install

Or install it yourself as:

gem install slackbotsy

Setup

botsy requires some or all of the following integrations setup in slack:

• outgoing webhook: for slack to send free-format messages out to botsy
• slash command: for slack to send messages prefixed with a slash command, for example /botsy
• incoming webhook: for botsy say and attach methods to respond

Set these up at https://your_team.slack.com/services/new and copy the webhook urls/tokens to botsy's config as below.

Sending messages to botsy

You have three choices of how to send messages to botsy. It is fine to mix and match these to listen to different kinds of messages.

Global outgoing webhook

This sends all messages from all channels to botsy, but requires a trigger word (e.g. botsy). This word must be included in hear-block regexes. The return from the hear block is posted publically to the sending channel. Alternatively, return nil and use say or attach to craft an asynchronous response.

Requires you to set the outgoing_token config variable.

Per-channel outgoing webhooks

These do not require any trigger word or magic prefix, but you must setup a webhook for every channel in which you want botsy to respond. This is useful to give your botsy a little personality, by seeming to respond to users' comments without being prompted.

As with global webhooks, hear block returns public responses, or use say or attach.

Add all required channel tokens to the outgoing_token array.

Slash commands

You can define one or more slash integrations that send any messages with a slash trigger prefix (for example /botsy). A major advantage is that messages can be triggered from all channels, groups and private chats.

The return value of the hear-block is sent as a private response to the user (like communication from the built-in slackbot). This can be useful for requesting verbose bot information without spamming channels. To respond publically from a hear-block, post direct to the channel using say or attach.

The slash trigger itself is used in the hear-block regex match, so you may setup as many slash integrations as you like with different triggers, and respond appropriately.

Add all slash integration tokens to config slash_token.

Sending messages to slack

There are four methods of sending data to slack in response to matching a hear block. These may be mixed as necessary.

Simple response in return

The return value from a hear-block is returned to slack in the http response to the sent message. This is a lightweight synchronous response to the same channel, and is sufficient for many needs.

Note: responses to outgoing webhooks are posted publically, responses to slash commands are private to the requesting user (and appear to come from slackbot).

Post simple text to an incoming webhook with say()

Asynchronous plain-text responses may be sent with the say() method from inside a hear-block. This is useful for multiple replies or to pass extra arguments, such as channel, to post response to a specific channel. It is also useful when botsy is expanded to be a general API for slack integration with third-party applications.

Set the value of the incoming_webhook config variable to the URL given in your slack Incoming Webhook integration.

Post attachments to an incoming webook with attach()

Works exactly like say(), except you may post JSON containing complex attachment information.

Upload data directly to slack using the API

Call post_message() to get full access to the Slack Web API /chat.postMessage call. Argument is a hash containing the same variables described in the Web API docs. This allows uploading of text snippets and binary data.

Example usage

require 'slackbotsy'
require 'sinatra'
require 'open-uri'

config = {
  'channel'          => '#default',
  'name'             => 'botsy',
  'incoming_webhook' => 'https://hooks.slack.com/services/XXXXXXXXX/XXXXXXXXX/XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX',
  'outgoing_token'   => 'secret'
}

bot = Slackbotsy::Bot.new(config) do

  # first arg is MatchData for the regex
  hear /echo (.+)/ do |mdata|
    "I heard #{user_name} say '#{mdata[1]}' in #{channel_name}"
  end

  # optional subsequent args will contain any captures
  hear /test (\w+) (\w+)/ do |_, foo, bar|
    "I got #{foo} and #{bar}"
  end

  hear /flip out/i do
    open('http://tableflipper.com/gif') do |f|
      "<#{f.read}>"
    end
  end

end

post '/' do
  bot.handle_item(params)
end

Web API

slackbotsy can now post to Slack using the Slack Web API. It may be used alongside the incoming webhooks to post.

Create a Slack user in your team for your bot, then create an api token for that user at https://api.slack.com/web, and set the config variable api_token when you configure botsy. Then you may use the post_message or upload convenience methods to post simple messages or upload files/text-snippets.

config = {
  'channel'   => '#default',
  'name'      => 'botsy',
  'api_token' => 'xoxp-0123456789-0123456789-0123456789-d34db33f'
}

bot = Slackbotsy::Bot.new(config) do

  hear /ping/ do
    post_message 'this is a simple posted message', channel: '#general'
  end

  hear /upload/ do
    upload(file: File.new('/tmp/kitten.jpg'), channel: '#general')
  end

end