SlackLine

This is a ruby gem supporting easy construction, sending, editing, and threading of messages and threads.

Are you ready? Because this is going to be so easy.

# Send a simple message directly
sent_message = SlackLine.message("Something happened!", to: "#general").post

# Construct a more complex message, then send it
msg = SlackLine.message do
  section do
    context "Don't worry! If this message surprises you, context @foobar"
    text "A thing has happened"
    text "Yeah, it happened for sure"
    link "How bad?", problems_path(problem.id)
  end

  text "More details.."
end
sent_message = msg.post(to: "#general")

# Send a _thread_ of messages (strings generate simple messages)
sent_thread = SlackLine.thread("First text", "Second text", msg, to: "#general").post

# You can also build them inline via dsl
sent_thread = SlackLine.thread(to: "@dm_recipient") do
  message do
    context "yeah"
    text "That's right"
  end

  message(already_built_message)
  message "this makes a basic message directly"
end.post

And then once you've sent a message or thread, you'll have a SentMessage or SentThread object (which is basically an Array of SentMessages). You can call SentMessage#update on any of those messages to edit them after the fact - this is especially useful for keeping a message in a public channel updated with the state of the process it's linking to.

update accepts a String, a Message, or a block defining a message. To update a SentThread, you'll need to choose message:

sent_message.update "Edit: never mind, false alarm"
sent_thread.first.update "Problem Resolved!"
sent_thread.detect { |m| m =~ /Not yet safe/ }&.update do
  text "it's safe now"
end

The only required setup is an OAuth token - each of these options can be set via ENV or SlackLine.configure:

• slack_token or SLACK_LINE_SLACK_TOKEN (required) - this allows the library to send messages and make API requests.
• look_up_users or SLACK_LINE_LOOK_UP_USERS (default false) - if your workspace refuses to turn @somebody mentions into links or notifications, you can set this and we'll parse them out, then use the slack API to map them to user/group IDs.
• bot_name or SLACK_LINE_BOT_NAME - what to call the bot that's posting (in slack). The default is to use its default name.
• default_channel or SLACK_LINE_DEFAULT_CHANNEL - a target name (either a channel with the leading pound-sign, or a user's handle with a leading at-sign). When not supplied, all send calls are required to specify a target instead.
• per_message_delay or SLACK_LINE_PER_MESSAGE_DELAY is a float, defaulting to 0.0. SlackLine will sleep for that duration after each message is posted, to allow you to avoid hitting rate-limits from posting many messages in a row.
• per_thread_delay or SLACK_LINE_PER_THREAD_DELAY is a float as well - SlackLine will sleep for this duration after each thread is posted, and after each non-thread message is posted.

You can just set those via the environment variables, but you can also set them on the singleton configuration object:

SlackLine.configure do |config|
  config.slack_token = ENV["SLACK_TOKEN"]
  config.look_up_users = true
  config.bot_name = "CI Bot"
  config.default_channel = "#ci-flow"
  config.per_message_delay = 0.2
  config.per_thread_delay = 2.0
end

If you're working in a context where you need to support multiple SlackLine configurations, don't worry! The singleton central config is what the singleton central Client uses (that's what all of the top-level SlackLine methods dispatch to), but you can construct additional clients with their own configs easily:

Slackline.configure do |config|
  config.slack_token = ENV["TOKEN"]
  config.default_channel = "#general"
  config.bot_name = "FooBot"
end

# Now SlackLine.message (et al) will use SlackLine.client,
# configured as above.

BAR_SLACK = SlackLine::Client.new(default_channel: "#team-bar", bot_name: "BarBot")

# And now you can call those methods on `BAR_SLACK` to use a different
# default channel and name

BAR_SLACK.thread("Message 1", "Message 2").post
BAR_SLACK.message("Message 3", to: "#bar-team-3").post