This is a serverless Slack Bot that uses Postlight's mercury parser to display the parsed content directly in your slack channel! So instead of sending a link to a certain article that will open in a new browser window, you will be sending the article as a readable post directly.
Once everything is set, use it as follows:
/parser <url>
This repo is based on Postlight's serverless-babel-starter. You can refer to it for serverless development documentation.
clone this repo:
git clone https://github.com/postlight/slash-mercury-parser.git
Install dependencies:
yarn install
Create a new slack app here and link it to your development slack workspace.
Under Add feature and functionality
:
-
Add a bot:
- Click on
Bots
- Click on
Add a bot User
- Enter a
Display name
andDefault username
- Click on
Add bot User
Â
- Click on
-
Add a slash command
- Click on
Slash Commands
- Click on
Create New Command
- Enter
/parser
,https://example.com/invoke
, andRenders the parsed content
forCommand
,Request URL
, andShort Description
- Click on
Save
- Click on
NOTE: you will fill in a correct Request URL
once you deploy your functions. You can leave it as is for now.
After you've installed the bot in your slack workspace, navigate to Install App
under Settings
and copy your Bot User OAuth Access Token
. This token will be used to verify the slack API call.
Create a secrets.json
file in the project root and add the following:
{
"SLACK_AUTH_TOKEN": "xxxx-YOUR-ACCESS-TOKEN"
}
yarn deploy:env
Windows users should modify the deploy
scripts as follows:
{
"deploy:dev": "sls deploy --stage dev",
"deploy:stage": "sls deploy --stage stage",
"deploy:production": "sls deploy --stage production"
}
NOTE: save your /post
URL when the deployment is complete. It looks like this: https://xxxxxxx.execute-api.region.amazonaws.com/env/invoke
and replace your Request URL
with it.
Inside a public
channel in your slack workspace, invoke the bot using:
/parser <url>
You should see a Parsing your article ..
message which is only visible to you, followed by a bot response of the parsed content as a post.
- Whenever the slash command is executed, slack makes a
POST
request to your app via theRequest URL
that was set. - Your logic will get executed and will invoke a slack API call.
- Slack expects a response within 3 seconds
- Slack API Documentation
Since Slack expects an OK
response within 3 seconds, the first lambda function ./src/invoke.js
checks for any errors in the URL, fetches the content from mercury, and invokes the second function ./src/uploadPost.js
. The second function is responsible for hitting the slack API and sending the post. If an error occurs, the user will be notified.
For example, /parser blabla
will result in this error:
Unless it is explicitly stated otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the work, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be dual licensed as above without any additional terms or conditions.
🔬 A Labs project from your friends at Postlight