Slack Nats

Interact with slack over NATS

Quick start

kubernetes

Run NATS using e.g. NATS Operator (this example assumes a NATS cluster running behind a service nats-cluster)

Add your slack token to slack-secret.yaml under the slacktoken key. The token must be base64 encoded (see the kube docs for more details):

echo -n 'xoxb-YOUR_SLACK_TOKEN' | base64

Run slack-nats in the cluster:

skaffold dev

Docker

Run NATS:

docker run -p 4222:4222 -p 8222:8222 -p 6222:6222 --name gnatsd -d nats:latest

Run slack-nats (you must provide the token of a valid slack user or bot):

docker run \
-e SLACK_TOKEN=xoxp-YOUR_SLACK_TOKEN \
-e NATS_URL=nats://host.docker.internal:4222 \
-d --name slack-nats \
natsflow/slack-nats:0.6.0

Interact with slack over nats. Here we get the user/bot we are running slack-nats with to post to a slack channel (the user/bot must be a member of the channel):

telnet localhost 4222
PUB slack.chat.postMessage INBOX.1 69
{'text':'Hello there everyone!','channel':'CDNPXK2KT','as_user':true}

Env Variables

key	default value	description
SLACK_TOKEN	n/a	A valid slack bot or user token that slack-nats will use to connect to the slack api.
NATS_URL	"nats://localhost:4222"	URL of the NATS server to connect to
PUBLISH_EVENTS	"false"	Whether slack-nats should publish slack RTM events to NATS.

If running multiple instances of slack-nats then you should set PUBLISH_EVENTS to "true" for at most one instance - this is to prevent duplicate events being published to NATS for a single slack event. The request-reply behaviour of slack-nats uses queue grouping, hence natively handles running multiple instances.

Nats Subjects

The following nats subjects are currently supported.

Request-Reply

slack-nats supports all json slack api methods - these are listed here. Note that the user/bot you are runnning slack-nats with may not have the necessary permissions to perform all the avilable slack methods - for example bot users cannot use the channels.join method.

The slack-nats subject is the slack api method prefixed by slack. - so for example the slack method chat.postMessage is accessed using the nats subject slack.chat.postMessage.

The request and response bodies match the slack api requests and responses exactly, so please refer to the slack api for documentation.

Unexpected errors, such as timeouts or unparsable responses will be returned in the format {"error" : "some error message..."}

Below are some examples using node-nats:

e.g. join channel

Uses the slack channels.join api.

nats.requestOne('slack.channels.join', {name: 'my-slack-channel'}, {}, 3000, resp => {
    console.log(resp)
})

output:

{ channel:
   { id: 'CDNPXK2KT',
     created: 1540570962,
     is_open: false,
     is_group: false,
     is_shared: false,
     is_im: false,
     is_ext_shared: false,
     is_org_shared: false,
     is_pending_ext_shared: false,
     is_private: false,
     is_mpim: false,
     unlinked: 0,
     name_normalized: 'my-slack-channel',
     num_members: 0,
     priority: 0,
     user: '',
     name: 'my-slack-channel',
     creator: 'U6WDH7CCC',
     is_archived: false,
     members: [ 'U6WDH7CCC', 'U7KMBRAVB' ],
     topic:
      { value: 'Testing stuff',
        creator: 'U6WDH7CCC',
        last_set: 1540916727 },
     purpose: { value: '', creator: '', last_set: 0 },
     is_channel: true,
     is_general: false,
     is_member: true,
     locale: '' },
  err: '' }

e.g. leave channel

Uses the slack channels.leave api.

nats.requestOne('slack.channels.leave', {id: 'CDNPXK2KT'}, {}, 3000, resp => {
    console.log(resp)
})

output:

{ not_in_channel: false, err: '' }

e.g. post a message

Uses the slack chat.postMessage api.

nats.requestOne('slack.chat.postMessage', { text: 'Hello there', channel: 'CDNPXK2KT', as_user: true }, {}, 3000, resp => {
  console.log(resp)
})

output:

{ channel: 'CDNPXK2KT', ts: '1541506301.003000', err: '' }

Publish-Subscribe

You can subscribe to events published over the Slack RTM api. Events will be published to the NATS subject slack.event.<event_name> where event_name matches the name published here. For example all messages sent in channels where the slacks-nats user has joined will be published to slack.event.message.

The following slack events are currently published to nats:

slack.event.message

Subscribe to this to receive all messages from all channels where the slacks-nats user has joined. Response is the slack message event.

e.g. (node)

nats.subscribe('slack.event.message', resp => {
    console.log(resp)
})

output:

{ type: 'message',
  channel: 'CDNPXK2KT',
  user: 'U6WDH7CCC',
  text: 'hey everyone',
  ts: '1541506728.003400',
  event_ts: '1541506728.003400',
  team: 'T09D77D4P',
  replace_original: false,
  delete_original: false }
  ...

Legal

This project is available under the Apache 2.0 License.