Simple Slack Bot

Simple Slack Bot makes writing your next Slack bot incredibly easy. By factoring out common functionality all Slack Bots require, you can focus on writing your business logic.

Installing

Pip

Run:

$ pip3 install simple_slack_bot

From Source

To install, simply clone the source, which will allow you to import SimpleSlackBot.

Configuration

To configure, set a single environment variable

SLACK_BOT_TOKEN with your Slack Bot's API token

Finding Your Slack Bot API Token

To generate or locate your Slack Bot Token, visit

https://[YOUR SLACK TEAM NAME HERE].slack.com/apps/manage/custom-integrations

and click

Bots

If you already have a bot created, you should see it listed here, otherwise you should be able to click

Add Configuration

to create one.

Once you have a bot find it listed in the configurations and click the

Edit

icon. You'll be brought to a page that lists your API token. This is what you'll use with Simple Slack Bot.

Examples

Youtube Video Example

Code Examples

For full examples, see the examples directory

To integrate with Simple Slack Bot, simply create an instance of it and register for notifications using a Python decorator.

This can be seen with the following code below. Our Simple Slack Bot will reply to every message of "Ping", with "Pong", to every channel it's a part of:

ping_pong.py

from simple_slack_bot.simple_slack_bot import SimpleSlackBot

simple_slack_bot = SimpleSlackBot(debug=True)


@simple_slack_bot.register("message")
def pong_callback(request):
    if request.message and request.message.lower() == "ping":
        request.write("Pong")


def main():
    simple_slack_bot.start()


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

At this point, your callback functions will be executed every time Simple Slack Bot receives the appropriate event.

Debug Mode

Note: Simple Slack Bot can be initialized with debug mode turned on, which will display all debug messages out to stdout and stderr.

To enable this simply pass debug=True when initializing Simple Slack Bot. As seen below:

simple_slack_bot = SimpleSlackBot(debug=True)

Additional Logging Control

If you want more control on the routing of your logging, instead of passing debug=True when initializing Simple Slack Bot, you can configure the global logging variable in your own application.

An example:

import logging
from simple_slack_bot.simple_slack_bot import SimpleSlackBot

dict_config = {
    'version': 1,
    'disable_existing_loggers': False,
    'formatters': {
        'standard': {
            'format': '%(asctime)s [%(levelname)s] %(name)s: %(message)s'
        },
    },
    'handlers': {
        'default': {
            'level': 'INFO',
            'formatter': 'standard',
            'class': 'logging.StreamHandler',
        },
    },
    'loggers': {
        '': {
            'handlers': ['default'],
            'level': 'INFO',
            'propagate': True
        },
        'django.request': {
            'handlers': ['default'],
            'level': 'WARN',
            'propagate': False
        },
    }
}

simple_slack_bot = SimpleSlackBot()
logging.config.dictConfig(dict_config)

Where you'd create your own dictConfig based on your own needs.

Supported Events

Simple Slack Bot handles all of the parsing and routing of Slack events. To be informed of new slack events, you must register a callback function with Simple Slack Bot for each event. All Slack Events are registered to and can be seen here.

The request Object

Each method you decorate in your Simple Slack Bot will need to take in a request. The contents of the request will differ depending on the event(s) you register to.

For each event you register for, take a look at the event here, as this is where the contents of the request will be defined.

For convenience, I've added the following attributes to all request objects:

• type - type of event
• channel - the channel from the underlying SlackEvent
  • Note: This can be an empty String. For example, this will be an empty String for the 'Hello' event.
• message - the received message

Helper Functions & Callbacks Making Callbacks

Often times when writing a Slack Bot, you'll find yourself writing a few key functions that I found generic enough to include in Simple-Slack-Bot. The function names are pretty self explanatory but they are as follows:

• helper_write(channel, content) - Writes a message to the channel as the bot
• helper_get_public_channel_ids() - Gets all public channel ids
• helper_get_private_channel_ids() - Gets all private channel ids
• helper_get_user_ids() - Gets all user ids
• helper_get_users_in_channel(channel_id) - Gets all users in a given channel
• helper_name_to_channel_id(name) - Converts a channel name to its respected channel id
• helper_user_name_to_user_id(name) - Converts a user name to its respected user id
• helper_channel_id_to_channel_name(channel_id) - Converts a channel id to its respected channel name
• helper_user_id_to_user_name(user_id) - Converts a user id to its respected user name

To gain access to these functions, simply call the appropriate function on your SimpleSlackBot instance.

Writing More Advanced Slack Bots

If you have found that Simple Slack Bot does not provide everything you are looking for, you can gain access to the underlying python Slack Client or SlackSocket object.

Running Local Development Version

If you want to run the local version of Simple Slack Bot and not the verison you downloaded through PyPi, you can run the following in the Simple-Slack-Bot directory:

python3 setup.py install

and then import it as usual

from simple_slack_bot.simple_slack_bot import SimpleSlackBot.

You'll also have to install Simple Slack Bot's dependencies using PyPi. A requirements.txt will be kept up to date, along side the setup.py for this use case and your convenience.

Don't Forget

The bot will only reply to channels that it is in. Don't forget to invite your bot into channels of interest!

Unit Tests

To run the unit test suite, execute

$ make test

To generate code coverage of the unit test suite, execute:

$ make test-and-generate-coverage

Simple Slack Bots

We'll be maintaining a list of Simple Slack Bots here.

If you have written a Simple Slack Bot, please contact me to have yours added!

Name	Author	Description
Ping Pong Bot	Greg Hilston	Ping Pong Bot was created to act as an example of how easy it is to create a bot using the open source Simple-Slack-Bot framework. Ping-Pong-Bot will look at every message sent to the channels that it is in, waiting for the case insensitive message "Ping". Once received Ping-Pong-Bot will write back to the very same channel "Pong".
The Office Bot	Greg Hilston	The Office Bot will look at every message sent to the channels that,it is in, waiting for a mention of the name of a character in the show, The Office, specifically the US version. Once received, The-Office-Bot will write back a random line that this character had throughout the show, including lines from deleted scenes.
Stan Bot	Jahir Fiquitiva	Stan Bot is a bot to help one with the SCRUM stand-up process.
Dice Bot	Greg Hilston	Dice Bot is used to perform simple dice rolls
DnD Bot	Greg Hilston	D and D Bot is used record small D&D sessions that take place in Slack, by recording the in game chat to a csv