A python framework for building slack slash bots. Get input parsing and validation, command routing, async responses, auto-generated help dialog, response visibility, and response message formatting all for free.
slash-slack is a web server with a single endpoint (by default /slash_slack). In order to connect the Slack Slash command with the slash-slack server, the slash-slack server must be publicly accessible and the slash command must be configured with Slack. View Slack slash command documentation here.
If you are interested in building a slash-slack bot with AWS Lambda check out sam-slash-slack.
# EX: /slash-slack math 10 * 10
# Response: 100.0
import os
from slash_slack import Flag, Float, SlashSlack, String
slash = SlashSlack(signing_secret=os.environ['SLACK_SIGNING_SECRET'])
app = slash.get_fast_api()
@slash.command("math")
def math_fn(
x: float = Float(),
symbol: str = Enum(values={"*", "+", "-", "/"}),
y: float = Float(),
):
if symbol == "*":
return x * y
if symbol == "+":
return x + y
if symbol == "-":
return x - y
if symbol == "/":
return x / yView a tutorial of creating a Slack slash command bot with slash-slack here.
Building a slack slash bot can seem very straightforward at first, however there are some complexities that make it difficult. slash-slack handles all of the complexities for you letting you focus on the bot response handlers.
slash-slack will verify that incoming requests were made by slack by validating the request signature. To disable signature verification use the dev=True option when creating the SlashSlack object.
Slack requires that the slash bot webhook be responded to within 3 seconds.
Often times the action being taken by the bot will depend on external services which might not respond within 3 seconds.
slash-slack sends an immediate 200 response to the webhook request, and runs the command function in the background. When the command function finishes, the response is sent back to slack using the response_url from the request.
You can optionally add content to the immediate response to let your user know that something is being
done in the background. A global/default response can be set with the acknowledge_response parameter on
the SlashSlack class, or at the command level with the acknowledge_response parameter on the command decorator.
The value passed to acknowledge_response will be passed to blocks._make_block_message and can be a str, block, list[str], or list[block]
where a block is a block kit block.
See the example for example usage.
slash-slack takes care of parsing command input into pre-defined args and flags which let you focus on writing the command function, and not wrangling the content into the format that you need.
slash-slack provides help dialog auto-generated from your commands, args, and flags. Additional details can be embedded directly into the command decorator and arg/flag initializers.
To request global help:
/slash-slack help
To request command specific help:
/slash-slack command --help
Slack slash command responses can be made visible only to the requestor, or to the entire channel. slash-slack adds the ability for any command to be made visible with the --visible flag.
Slack expects responses to be in the Slack Block Kit format. slash-slack will automatically convert your string responses into slack mrkdown blocks.
slash-slack is a WSGI app based on the FastAPI framework. Deploy using uvicorn.
You must expose the underlying app from the SlashSlack bot.
# main.py
from slash_slack import SlashSlack
slash = SlashSlack()
app = slash.get_fast_api()uvicorn main:app --port 9002 --reload
A mock slack webhook client mock-slack is bundled with slash-slack. This client can be used to mock webhooks sent by slack.
To enter the mock slack client simply run mock-slack.
SlashSlackmust bedev=Trueto disable signature verification.
mock-slack will prompt you for input. Responses from the slash-slack server will be served in your browser in the Slack Block Kit Builder.
$ mock-slack
MSG: echo test
The inputs and parsing for each command is determined by the parameters to the function. SlashSlack parses the function parameters and generates an input schema.
When a request is made to a given command, SlashSlack attempts to parse the input text into the command input schema.
Flags are boolean options that can be added to commands anywhere within the request. During the input parsing, flags are parsed and removed, and then args are parsed.
There is no difference in doing /slash-slack command arg --flag and /slash-slack command --flag arg.
There are 2 global flags: --visible and --help.
The --visible flag will make the response visible in the channel that the request was made. By default, responses are only visible to the user which made the request.
The --help flag will indicate that the SlashSlack app should return the relevant help message. Whether that is app level /slash-slack --help, or command level /slash-slack command --help.
All non-flag arguments to the command function make up the input schema for the command function. This means that the # of words in the command request must match up with the # of non-flag arguments. (With two exceptions: String, UnknownLengthList).
When the only non-flag parameter for the function is a String() then the entire argument body (with flags removed) will be passed into that parameter.
# EX: /slash-slack echo hello --upper world
# Response: HELLO WORLD
@slash.command("echo")
def echo(s: str, upper: bool = Flag()):
return sTo collect an arbitrary # of args from the user use the UnknownLengthList arg type. This arg type will be passed a list of all of the values passed to it parsed into the given type.
Because this consumes args till the end of the arg list, this must be the last non-flag param for the command function.
# EX: /slash-slack avg 10, 20, 30
# Response: 20.0
@slash.command("avg")
def avg(numbers = UnknownLengthList(arg_type=Float())):
return sum(numbers) / len(numbers)If you want to have access to the complete request as sent from the slack servers. Add a param with the type annotation of SlashSlackRequest to the command function.
# EX: /slash-slack echo hello world
# Response: hello world This request was made by John Doe
@slash.command("echo")
def echo(content: str, slash_slack_request: SlashSlackRequest):
return f"{content} This request was made by {slash_slack_request.user_name}"from typing import List
from slash_slack import Enum, Flag, Float, SlashSlack, String, UnknownLengthList
slash = SlashSlack(
signing_secret=os.environ["SLACK_SIGNING_SECRET"],
description="A python framework for slack slash bots.",
)
app = slash.get_fast_api()
@slash.command(
"echo",
summary="Echo",
help="Returns the provided text (made upper or lower case)",
)
def test_fn(
content: str = String(help="The content which will be echoed"),
upper: bool = Flag(help="Converts the input text to all UPPERCASE"),
lower: bool = Flag(help="Converts the input text to all lowercase"),
):
if upper:
return content.upper()
if lower:
return content.lower()
return content
@slash.command(
"math",
summary="Performs basic arithmetic between two numbers",
)
def math_fn(
x: float = Float(help="A number."),
symbol: str = Enum(
values={"*", "+", "-", "/"}, help="The arithmetic operation to use."
),
y: float = Float(help="A number."),
):
if symbol == "*":
return x * y
if symbol == "+":
return x + y
if symbol == "-":
return x - y
if symbol == "/":
return x / y
@slash.command(
"avg",
summary="Return the average of the given numbers",
help="EX: `avg 90 100 110.9`",
)
def unknown(
nums: List[float] = UnknownLengthList(
arg_type=Float(), help="The numbers to average."
),
):
return f"The avg of the given numbers is {sum(nums) / len(nums)}"/slash-slack help
/slash-slack math --help
/slash-slack math 10 * 20
/slash-slack math a * 100
