2023-07-04-implementing-the-slack-meme-bot copy.md

layout	author	title	subTitle	date	categories	tags	bigimg	img	desc	series	toc
post	Van Schandevijl Wouter	The itenium Slack Meme Bot® : Implementation	How was the Slack Meme Bot implemented?	2023-07-04	javascript	product fun	url desc origin prompt slack-meme-bot-big.png By Midjourney Midjourney memes on social media --ar 2:1	url desc origin title prompt slack-meme-bot2.png Actual footage of our meme bot! Midjourney By Midjourney the slack meme bot	Technical implementation details for the Slack Meme Bot	slack-meme-poster	icon title slack Slack Meme Bot

How does the Slack Meme Bot work, technically?

docker-compose

The docker-compose exists of two services

File Server

halverneus/static-file-server makes the memes accessible from the internet.
The Slack WebHook sends just the url of the meme, after which Slack attempts to download the image before actually posting it.

If Slack cannot download the image, nothing will show up in your Slack channel.

You will probably need to configure the meme file accessibility.

chmod -R 755 memes_dir

Cron Job

The Dockerfile copies the job folder with the Node program to the docker container and then runs start.sh which schedules running slack-meme-poster.js and starts the Cron daemon.

Slack Meme Poster

The slack-meme-poster.js selects a random file from your MEMES_DIR and moves it to a already-sent subfolder to make sure no meme is ever posted twice.

It then sends the meme url to Slack using the WebHook and 🎉, meme posted!

Make it your own

Configure the actual Slack message

• messageToPostWithMeme: A simple string sent along with the meme
• Configure the entire Slack message using the Slack Block Kit Builder