#Slack Bot Framework

A simple to use framework to receive and respond to real time messages.

Set Up

Slack Slash Commands

Navigate to https://slack.com/apps and click on "Build your own".
Select "Something just for my team" from the next menu.
Select Bots, give your bot a username and click on the button.
Copy the Slack Token and add it to the environment variables of your server.

On a Mac:
export SLACK_API_TOKEN={slack_token}

Slack Bot Framework

Clone the repository onto the server (with a publicly accessible address).
Install node packages by running:
$ npm install

Ensure you have Gulp installed:
$ npm install -g gulp

When making changes to the src files, watch the changes with gulp:
$ gulp

To start the server, run:
$ npm start

The debug logs will be shown in the terminal.

Examples

In the src directory, you will find two example commands.

Hello Command

A command that reads the hello command and responds with text.

xkcd Command

A command that reads the xkcd command and responds with the latest xkcd web comic image.
RTM can only reply with simple text. To send an image, we will need to use the WebClient web.chat.postMessage(...)
While we wait for the bot to receive the image, I send a "Processing..." message to the user to notify that the command was indeed received.

References

Slack Bots
https://api.slack.com/bot-users

Real time messaging
https://api.slack.com/rtm

Adding attachments to the message with WebClient
https://api.slack.com/methods/chat.postMessage