Add a field for bots to reacji in response to webhooks

[jdherg]

Proposed syntax: reacji (or reaction_emoji) as a response key with the emoji name as the value. This would add that emoji as the bot's reaction to the message that caused the webhook.

{
  "reacji": "octopus"
}

This would be mutually exclusive with response_not_required but could be used either with or without content.

This pattern would allow bots to provide feedback (✔️ for complete, etc) to users with a minimal amount of noise in the topic.

[timabbott]

@jdherg this is for outgoing webhook bots, in particular? The concept is reasonable.

API-wise, I don't think we want to create new abbreviations like reactji; we should have the formatting match the API for specifying one wants to add a reaction that exists elsewhere.

[zulipbot]

Hello @zulip/server-bots members, this issue was labeled with the "area: bots" label, so you may want to check it out!

[jdherg]

Yep! reaction is totally fine -- I think that's what's used elsewhere. If we wanted to be really fancy it could even be reactions and take a list :)

In case any passers-by are thinking about picking this up, I think this might look something like:

• In zerver/lib/outgoing_webhook.py:
  • Parse the new field (reaction) in process_success
  • Make a new function add_response_reaction that's the equivalent of send_response_message
    • While there's already a do_add_reaction in zerver/lib/actions.py, it assumes that you've validated your reaction and done some normalizing. I'm a little fuzzy here, but I think you may want to create a check_reaction and check_add_reaction that are equivalent to check_message and check_send_message and factor out some of the code in add_reaction in zerver/views/reactions.py for them.
  • Call that new add_response_reaction function in process_success_response

Open question: how should this behave if the requested reaction isn't actually an emoji name in that realm? Cancel the reaction but allow any message through? Cancel both?

[timabbott]

For invalid reactions data, I'd expect it to do our semi-standard outgoing webhook error handling of notifying the user who owns the bot, and then abort without doing anything.

[PIG208]

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[PIG208]

Yes, there is a linked PR waiting for review.