@slack/client

Node Library for the Slack APIs

Motivation

This is a wrapper around the Slack RTM and Web APIs.

This library will provide the low level functionality you need to build reliable apps and projects on top of Slack's APIs. It:

• handles reconnection logic and request retries
• provides reasonable defaults for events and logging
• defines a basic model layer and data-store for caching Slack RTM API responses

This library does not attempt to provide application level support, e.g. regex matching and filtering of the conversation stream. If you're looking for those kinds of features, you should check out one of the great libraries built on top of this.

Installation

npm install @slack/client --save

Usage

• Examples
• RTM Client
  • Creating an RTM client
  • Listen to messages
  • Send messages
  • Update messages
  • [Data stores] (#data-stores)
  • [Send direct messages] (#send-direct-messages)
  • RTM Client Lifecycle
• Web Client
  • Uploading a file
• Migrating from earlier versions
• Models

Examples

There are some examples for using this package in the examples directory, these include:

• connecting to the RTM API
• connecting to the RTM API and using a datastore
• using the web client
• uploading a file via the web client

RTM Client

The Real Time Messaging client connects to Slack's RTM API over a websocket.

It allows you to listen for activity in the Slack team you've connected to and push simple messages back to that team over the websocket.

Creating an RTM client

var RtmClient = require('@slack/client').RtmClient;

var token = process.env.SLACK_API_TOKEN || '';

var rtm = new RtmClient(token, {logLevel: 'debug'});
rtm.start();

Capturing the rtm.start payload

The RTM client will emit a RTM.AUTHENTICATED event, with the rtm.start payload.

var CLIENT_EVENTS = require('@slack/client').CLIENT_EVENTS;

rtm.on(CLIENT_EVENTS.RTM.AUTHENTICATED, function (rtmStartData) {
  console.log(`Logged in as ${rtmStartData.self.name} of team ${rtmStartData.team.name}, but not yet connected to a channel`);
});

Listen to messages

var RTM_EVENTS = require('@slack/client').RTM_EVENTS;

rtm.on(RTM_EVENTS.MESSAGE, function (message) {
  // Listens to all `message` events from the team
});

rtm.on(RTM_EVENTS.CHANNEL_CREATED, function (message) {
  // Listens to all `channel_created` events from the team
});

Send messages

var RTM_CLIENT_EVENTS = require('@slack/client').CLIENT_EVENTS.RTM;

// you need to wait for the client to fully connect before you can send messages
rtm.on(RTM_CLIENT_EVENTS.RTM_CONNECTION_OPENED, function () {
  // This will send the message 'this is a test message' to the channel identified by id 'C0CHZA86Q'
  rtm.sendMessage('this is a test message', 'C0CHZA86Q', function messageSent() {
    // optionally, you can supply a callback to execute once the message has been sent
  });
});

Update messages

rtm.sendMessage('doing stuff!', channel.id, function (err, msg) {
  msg.text = "Updated!";

  /* msg is an object which contains:
   * ts (string) Timestamp of the message to be updated
   * channel (string) ID of the channel the original message was sent in
   * text (string) New text to be displayed
   * opts (object) Additional options, see here: https://api.slack.com/methods/chat.update
   */
  rtm.updateMessage(msg, function (err, res) {
    console.log(err, res);
  });
});

Data stores

var RtmClient = require('@slack/client').RtmClient;

// The memory data store is a collection of useful functions we can include in our RtmClient
var MemoryDataStore = require('@slack/client').MemoryDataStore;

var CLIENT_EVENTS = require('@slack/client').CLIENT_EVENTS;

var token = process.env.SLACK_API_TOKEN;

var rtm = new RtmClient(token, {
  // Sets the level of logging we require
  logLevel: 'error',
  // Initialise a data store for our client, this will load additional helper functions for the storing and retrieval of data
  dataStore: new MemoryDataStore()
});

rtm.start();

// Wait for the client to connect
rtm.on(CLIENT_EVENTS.RTM.RTM_CONNECTION_OPENED, function() {
  // Get the user's name
  var user = rtm.dataStore.getUserById(rtm.activeUserId);

  // Get the team's name
  var team = rtm.dataStore.getTeamById(rtm.activeTeamId);

  // Log the slack team name and the bot's name
  console.log('Connected to ' + team.name + ' as ' + user.name);
});

Send Direct Messages

var RTM_EVENTS = require('@slack/client').RTM_EVENTS;

// Responds to a message with a 'hello' DM
rtm.on(RTM_EVENTS.MESSAGE, function(message) {
  var user = rtm.dataStore.getUserById(message.user)

  var dm = rtm.dataStore.getDMByName(user.name);

  rtm.sendMessage('Hello ' + user.name + '!', dm.id);
});

RTM Client Lifecycle

The RTM client has its own lifecycle events. These reflect the different states the RTM client can be in as it connects to Slack's RTM API.

The full details of the client lifecycle are in the RTM client events file

The most important events are:

• RTM_CONNECTION_OPENED: the remote server has acked the socket and sent a hello message, the connection is now live and can be used to send messages
• DISCONNECT: the RTM client has disconnected and will not try to reconnect again automatically

Web Client

Uploading a file

See examples/upload-a-file.js

Migrating from earlier versions

This is an incomplete list of items to consider when you migrate from earlier versions. As issues and PRs are raised for things that don't work as expected we'll fill this out.

Models

The model objects no longer provide utility functions for working with the API. This is to decouple them from the client implementation. There should be functions on each of the clients that allow you to take the same actions you took from the model via the clients instead. The most common of these are below.

Sending a message

channel.sendMessage('test message');

becomes

rtmClient.sendMessage('test message', channel.id);

Posting a message

channel.postMessage({
  attachments: [...]
});

becomes

var data = {
  attachments: [...]
};
webClient.chat.postMessage(channelId, 'test message', data, function() {});

Copyright

Copyright © Slack Technologies, Inc. MIT License; see LICENSE for further details.