Sending formatted links doesn't work

[jdowning]

We switched to using hubot-slack 3.0 and am seeing weird formatting with messages that include URLs.

For example, I have a script with msg.send "[#{url}|details]". The output is as follows (if url ==https://google.com):

v2: [details] << where details is a hyperlink in the channel
v3: [https://google.com%7Cdetails]

I've tried <https://google.com|details> too, but that input is printed literally in the channel.

[paulhammond]

Thanks for opening the bug here - sorry we couldn't resolve the issue on twitter.

I've reproduced this. You're right that this worked in v2, but it was one of those things where it worked by accident, which makes a fix harder.

To understand what's going on here, it helps to know how Slack formats links internally. The summary is that a link in slack is represented by <url|label>, for example: <http://www.example.com|example.com>.

Hubot v2 converted URLS into links inside the adapter, and did so naively. It converted [http://www.example.com|details] into [<http://www.example.com|details]>. Note: the brackets are unbalanced, so the closing bracket shows up as part of the link.

With Hubot v3 our servers convert URLs into links, it converts [http://www.example.com|details] into [<http://www.example.com>|details]. Which is technically correct, but not what you want.

I think the answer here is for us to work out a way for hubot to send formatted text to slack (so you can send [<http://www.example.com|details>] which is what you really want. I am working on a plan to make this possible...

[jdowning]

Thanks for responding here @paulhammond !

I wrote up a quick script to test this and the URLs are still not parsing as documented:

Hubot Script:

module.exports = (robot) ->
  robot.hear /^test msg$/i, (msg) ->
    msg.send "You can go to <https://www.google.com|google> and search."

Slack Output:

[8:55 AM] Justin: test msg
[8:55 AM] Hubot: You can go to <https://www.google.com|google> and search.

Any ideas?

[jdowning]

FYI, I updated hubot-slack and am still experiencing this issue:

$ npm list | grep slack
├─┬ [email protected]
│ └─┬ [email protected]

[siygle]

+1
I also found that user email (e.g. [email protected]) would parse become [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Why not just keep the old format?

[paulhammond]

@ferrari that's a slightly different issue, which is fixed by #125. The old version of hubot worked with different APIs on the Slack side. The new APIs work differently, but add a lot of new functionality. Unfortunately we're still shaking out some edge cases, sorry about the problems this is causing you.

@justindowning: Unfortunately the fix for this needs some more work on our servers, so didn't make the cut for 3.2. We're still working on it...

[siygle]

Thanks!
We did some modify on regex match to get correct format for now,
hope can see new version come out soon.

[paulhammond]

@ferrari We just merged the pull request, but it's not yet made it into a release. Until then you could put something like this in your package.json and I think it'll pull in the new code:

"hubot-slack": "slackhq/hubot-slack#64d7c572",

Don't forget to change it back after the next release!

[lilyball]

I just submitted a pull request (#129) that (among other things) tweaks the formatting so it stops using both the label and the link together. It's just weird to get results like "apple.com http://apple.com".

[paulhammond]

@kballard that's a different issue. This is about sending formatted links to Slack, not receiving formatted links from Slack.

[ianfixes]

If I understand this correctly, the issue is currently server-side? Or to say it another way, there is currently nothing I can do in this or the node-slack-client repository to make links work?

[omega]

Any progress or updates on this issue? We rely on a lot of formatted links in our messages, and I can't find any ways to get the 3.0 adapter to send links in a format that gets formatted correctly

[ianfixes]

Seconded.

[jdowning]

Unfortunately the fix for this needs some more work on our servers

@paulhammond How are things looking server-side?

[jdanlewis]

It would be nice if the link text allowed whitespace as well, e.g.:

msg.send "<http://www.slack.com|Check it out!>"

Is there a workaround to achieve this type of formatting?

[gabriel403]

Is this getting fixed sometimes soon peeps?

[glortho]

+1

[gampleman]

+1

[justmiles]

+1

[adambuckland]

+1

[tonglil]

+1

[alexslade]

+1

[Soulfire86]

+1 Any closer to this?

[evanwolf]

+1 This also inhibits Slack's own custom slackbot responses from serving html.

I wonder if there are security issues. Skype started analyzing all IM for evil links because of bots using Skype APIs to send phishing and malware links. Their tradeoff was "go back on our promise of end-to-end privacy" or "save our network".

[omega]

But how would evil bots get access to slack? Isn't it all private?

On 1. mai 2015, at 23.08, Phil Wolff [email protected] wrote:

+1 This also inhibits Slack's own custom slackbot responses from serving html.

I wonder if there are security issues. Skype started analyzing all IM for evil links because of bots using Skype APIs to send phishing and malware links. Their tradeoff was "go back on our promise of end-to-end privacy" or "save our network".

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[UncannyBingo]

Howdy y'all, new project maintainer here. I am looking into this this week! Hold tight, we'll get this sorted.

[JoeMattleman]

I ran into this issue trying to shorten our squad's channel topic into descriptive links. I want: "Appear.in | JIRA Board | Confluence Page" or similar links all visible without hovering over the topic. Thanks!

[aklinkert]

Any progress @DEGoodmanWilson? 😟

[UncannyBingo]

Yes, we will have something for you soon!

[markaschneider]

Setting parse='none' (as @mrcarriere mentioned above) worked for me.

[meetravi]

+1

[korneel]

Will hyperlinking words and terms in a Slack message be supported when this ticket is closed? Because now it's not supported. This would be very useful for formatting Hubot messages.

[UncannyBingo]

Sorry, a bit behind on closing tickets. This should be fixed in v4. To use the feature, just follow the guide here: https://api.slack.com/docs/message-formatting

[tedsteen]

Omg. Thank you!

[rucsi]

[Roach]

@rucsi is the mrkdwn_in param being passed to specify which fields to parse as markdown?

https://api.slack.com/docs/message-formatting#message_formatting

[viveksinha]

@Roach
This is not working for me, when the URL is sent in text outside the attachments for chat.update command. FYI, it works for chat.postMessage command and mrkdwn is set to true for both commands. I guess I'm missing something here.

[kynnjo]

FWIW, this remains broken, as of 2018-02-08.

[imTachu]

+1 @kynnjo

[viveksinha]

For me, it is working now.

[larshb]

+1

[webcat12345]

Hello everyone.
I have an issue for slack notification on Win 10.
I used slack bot and sending formatted message, https://app.shipez.us|link
it looks like link on the bot channel but display like <link> on notification.
Also it works on Mac and Ubuntu, Win 8 properly but not working on only Win 10.

If anyone has a solution, please let me know.
thanks.

[Wimmmmm]

Why is this ticket being closed? The issue is still there - I cannot write manually nor via API a link with a label, to sow only the label.

[novicedev7291]

This is not working for me as well in slack client on macos x

[recursionbane]

Can confirm this is still broken. @DEGoodmanWilson, please reopen.