In this tutorial we'll implement slack-mathbot.
A typical production Slack bot is a combination of a vanilla web server and a websocket application that talks to the Slack Real Time Messaging API. The web server is optional, but most people will run their Slack bots on Heroku in which case a web server is required to prevent Heroku from shutting the bot down. It also makes it convenient to develop a bot and test using foreman
.
Create a Gemfile
that uses slack-ruby-bot, sinatra (a web framework) and puma (a web server). For development we'll also use foreman and write tests with rspec.
source 'http://rubygems.org'
gem 'slack-ruby-bot'
gem 'puma'
gem 'sinatra'
group :development, :test do
gem 'rake'
gem 'foreman'
end
group :test do
gem 'rspec'
gem 'rack-test'
end
Run bundle install
to get all the gems.
Create a folder called slack-mathbot
and inside of it create app.rb
.
module SlackMathbot
class App < SlackRubyBot::App
end
end
Create a folder called slack-mathbot/commands
and inside of it create calculate.rb
. For now this calculator will always return 4.
module SlackMathbot
module Commands
class Calculate < SlackRubyBot::Commands::Base
command 'calculate' do |client, data, _match|
send_message client, data.channel, '4'
end
end
end
end
Create a slack-mathbot.rb
at the root and require the above files.
require 'slack-ruby-bot'
require 'slack-mathbot/commands/calculate'
require 'slack-mathbot/app'
We will need to keep the bot alive on Heroku, so create web.rb
.
require 'sinatra/base'
module SlackMathbot
class Web < Sinatra::Base
get '/' do
'Math is good for you.'
end
end
end
Tie all the pieces togehter in config.ru
which creates a thread for the bot and runs the web server on the main thread.
$LOAD_PATH.unshift(File.dirname(__FILE__))
require 'slack-mathbot'
require 'web'
Thread.new do
begin
SlackMathbot::App.instance.run
rescue Exception => e
STDERR.puts "ERROR: #{e}"
STDERR.puts e.backtrace
raise e
end
end
run SlackMathbot::Web
In Slack administration create a new Bot Integration under services/new/bot.
On the next screen, note the API token.
Create a .env
file with the API token from above and make sure to add it to .gitignore
.
SLACK_API_TOKEN=...
Create a Procfile
which foreman
will use when you run the foreman start
command below.
web: bundle exec puma -p $PORT
Run foreman start
. Your bot should be running.
14:32:32 web.1 | Puma starting in single mode...
14:32:32 web.1 | * Version 2.11.3 (ruby 2.1.6-p336), codename: Intrepid Squirrel
14:32:32 web.1 | * Min threads: 0, max threads: 16
14:32:32 web.1 | * Environment: development
14:32:35 web.1 | * Listening on tcp://0.0.0.0:5000
14:32:35 web.1 | Use Ctrl-C to stop
14:32:36 web.1 | I, [2015-07-10T14:32:36.216663 #98948] INFO -- : Welcome 'mathbot' to the 'xyz' team at https://xyz.slack.com/.
14:32:36 web.1 | I, [2015-07-10T14:32:36.766955 #98948] INFO -- : Successfully connected to https://xyz.slack.com/.
Invite the bot to a channel via /invite [bot name]
and send it a calculate
command with [bot name] calculate 2+2
. It will respond with 4
from the code above.
Create spec/spec_helper.rb
that includes the bot files and shared RSpec support from slack-ruby-bot.
$LOAD_PATH.unshift(File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), '..'))
require 'slack-ruby-bot/rspec'
require 'slack-mathbot'
Create a test for the bot application itself in spec/slack-mathbot/app_spec.rb
.
require 'spec_helper'
describe SlackMathbot::App do
def app
SlackMathbot::App.new
end
it_behaves_like 'a slack ruby bot'
end
Create a test for the calculate
command in spec/slack-mathbot/commands/calculate_spec.rb
. The bot is addressed by its user name.
require 'spec_helper'
describe SlackMathbot::Commands::Calculate do
def app
SlackMathbot::App.new
end
it 'returns 4' do
expect(message: "#{SlackRubyBot.config.user} calculate 2+2", channel: 'channel').to respond_with_slack_message('4')
end
end
See lib/slack-ruby-bot/rspec/support/slack-ruby-bot for other shared RSpec behaviors.
See DEPLOYMENT for how to deploy your bot to production.