@atomist/slack-messages

@atomist/slack-messages

Node module @atomist/slack-messages helps rendering well formatted Slack messages sent by @atomist from your Rug event and command handlers. This module also lets you add actions to your Slack messages that execute Rug instructions. See the Atomist Documentation for more information.

Using Slack message builder

Construct message as a plain map following Slack message formatting API:

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

// A very simple message
const msg: SlackMessage = { text: "Simple message" };

// Here is an example of a message with a Slack action (button) that launches
// a rug instruction when clicked.
// This assumes user, issue and instruction objects are defined elsewhere.
const msg: SlackMessage = {
                text: `${url(user.url, "@" + user.name)} opened issue: ${url(issue.url, issue.title)}`,
                attachments: [
                    {
                        text: escape(issue.body),
                        fallback: escape(issue.title),
                        mrkdwn_in: ["text"],
                        actions: [
                            rugButtonFrom({ text: "Close issue" }, instruction),
                        ],
                    },
                ],
            };

And then simply render message. This will construct JSON string representation of the message:

const renderedMsg = render(msg);

Or to produce pretty JSON string:

const renderedMsg = render(msg, true);

This will produce the following JSON string (pretty version):

{
    "text": "<https://github.com/anna|@anna> opened issue: <https://github.com/someorg/somerepo/issues/484|This issue title contains &lt;unsafe&gt; characters and &amp;>",
    "attachments": [
        {
            "text": "This is a very important issue with body containing &lt;unsafe&gt; characters and even &amp;",
            "fallback": "This issue title contains &lt;unsafe&gt; characters and &amp;",
            "mrkdwn_in": [
                "text"
            ],
            "callback_id": "cllbck1",
            "actions": [
                {
                    "text": "Close issue",
                    "type": "button",
                    "name": "rug",
                    "value": "somebuttonid"
                }
            ]
        }
    ]
}

Note that render function will automatically assign unique callback_id to each attachments that has actions. But, if you provide your custom callback_id it will be preserved as is.

Additional helper functions:

Special characters

escape("Slack requires you to escape <, > and &");
  => "Slack requires you to escape &lt;, &gt; and &amp;"

Links

// Simple link
url("https://www.atomist.com");
  => "<https://www.atomist.com>"

// Link with label
url("https://www.atomist.com", "atomist");
  => "<https://www.atomist.com|atomist>"

User & channel links

// @some-user (Slack will display user name for provided user ID)
user("U123");
  => "<@U123>"

// #some-channel (Slack will display channel name for provided channel ID)
channel("C123");
  => "<#C123>"

Special variables

// @channel
atChannel();
  => "<!channel>"

// @here
atHere();
  => "<!here>"

// @everyone
atEveryone();
  => "<!everyone>"

Emoji

emoji("smile");
  => ":smile:";

Markdown

Slack will render markdown if field where markdown is present is included in mrkdwn_in array.

bold("This text will appear bold");
  => "*This text will appear bold*"

italic("This text will appear italic");
  => "_This text will appear italic_"

strikethrough("This text will appear strike-through");
  => "~This text will appear strike-through~"

// Single line code block
codeLine("var a = new A();");
  =>  "`var a = new A();`"

// Multi line code block
codeBlock("var a = new A();\nvar b = new B();");
  => "```var a = new A();\nvar b = new B();```"

// List
listItem("Item 1");
  => "• Item 1"

GitHub to Slack markdown conversion

GitHub and Slack markdown are different enough to make your GitHub issues or GitHub PRs look quite bad in Slack by default. You can use githubToSlack function from Markdown to convert text that uses GitHub markdown to text that will look good in Slack:

githubToSlack("* list item 1\n* list item 2\n\**some bold text** and *some italic text* with a link [click here](http://someplace.com)");
  => "• list item 1\n• list item 2\n*some bold text* and _some italic text_ with a link <http://someplace.com|click here>"

Support

General support questions should be discussed in the #support channel on our community Slack team at atomist-community.slack.com.

If you find a problem, please create an issue.

Development

Notable conventions

• tslint with a modified rule set
• mocha test example
• power asserts with proper configuration
• a directory structure separating source, test, and compiled .js
• yarn.lock file

You will need to install npm, yarn, and TypeScript so that you can run the following commands from the command line.

Command	Reason
$ yarn	to install all the required packages
$ tsc -w	to continually compile your TypeScript files (run in a different terminal)
$ yarn test	to run tests and ensure everything is working
$ yarn autotest	run tests continuously (you also need to run tsc -w)

Test

Test using the standard approach for Node modules.

$ yarn test

Release

To create a new release of the project, simply push a tag of the form M.N.P where M, N, and P are integers that form the next appropriate semantic version for release. The version in the package.json is replaced by the build and is totally ignored! For example:

$ git tag -a 1.2.
$ git push --tags

The Travis CI build (see badge at the top of this page) will publish the NPM module and automatically create a GitHub release using the tag name for the release and the comment provided on the annotated tag as the contents of the release notes.

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Created by Atomist. Need Help? Join our Slack team.

Changelog

0.9.0 - 2017-08-14

Added

• Add standard formatted Slack messages and ResponseMessage for success,
• Deprecate renderError