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Project Archived: Slack has changed the API significantly and this doesn't work anymore.

Leaving this here just for reading purposes.

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Slack CMD

A command line tool to interface slack.

Install

$ pip install slack.py

Usage

Basic Usage

All the subcommands require a Slack access token to work. You can pass the token either as a parameter:

$ slack -a <AUTH-TOKEN> auth_test

or as an environment variable:

$ SLACK_API_TOKEN=<AUTH-TOKEN> slack auth_test

Authentication in Slack is based on OAuth and might be complicated to set it up. To get started, you can generate a personal token from this page: https://api.slack.com/custom-integrations/legacy-tokens

Channels

This commands allows you to interact with Slack channels (listing, archiving or deleting them). All these subcommands accept filters like --starts-with or --contains. Deleting and Archiving allow --dry-run mode to simulate the behavior without making real changes. Be aware of Slack API Rates. See section below

See examples below.

Listing Channels

List channels' ids, names, archived status:

$ slack -a <AUTH-TOKEN> channels

You can filter by --starts-with:

$ slack -a <AUTH-TOKEN> channels --starts-with 'z-visitor'

And --contains:

$ slack -a <AUTH-TOKEN> channels --contains 'visitor'

Archiving and Deleting Channels

(Warning: Once a channel is deleted there's no way to restore it. Use it at your own risk)

Use your usual channels filters and pass the --archive or --delete flags to either archive or delete the matching channels. Try your action with the --dry-run flag before performing the real action to see which channels would be deleted.

$ slack -a <AUTH-TOKEN> channels --starts-with 'z-visitor' --delete --dry-run --sleep 0

The --sleep parameter is required for --archive and --delete due to Slack API Rates. See below.

Finally, a real --delete command looks like:

$ slack -a <AUTH-TOKEN> channels --starts-with 'z-visitor' --delete

Slack API Rates

Some commands like --delete channels can't be issued too frequently because the Slack API fails. That's why most commands have a --sleep parameter that will wait a given number of milliseconds before issuing new requests. You can try decreasing it by just passing --sleep to your commands. I couldn't find any official documentation for the correct time limits of some methods. I tried out and for example, deleting channels requires at least 10 seconds before every request.