slack-nats

Slack Nats

Interact with slack over NATS

Quick start

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):

docker run \
-e SLACK_TOKEN=xoxp-YOUR_SLACK_TOKEN \
-e NATS_URL=nats://host.docker.internal:4222 \
-d --name slack-nats \
natsflow/slack-nats:0.0.1

Interact with slack over nats. Here we get the user we are running slack-nats with to join a slack channel:

telnet localhost 4222
PUB slack.channel.join INBOX.1 26
{"name": "hcom-nats-test"}

By default slack-nats will connect to nats running on nats://localhost:4222 - to change this set the NATS_URL env variable.

Quick start (kube)

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

Run slack-nats in the cluster (you must add your slack token to deployment.yaml):

skaffold dev

Nats Subjects

The following nats subjects are currently supported.

Request-Reply

slack-nats supports all json slack api methods - these are listed here.

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:

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

{ 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: '' }

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

{ not_in_channel: false, err: '' }

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

{ 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.

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

{ 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.