Why can't we use webhook for functions other than `slack_bot()`?

[Bisaloo]

slack_bot() works fine when provided with just an incoming webhook. Why do the other functions (such as slackr() or slack_msg() require more arguments (token, username, etc.) and do not allow to pass just the webhook?

[mrkaye97]

@Bisaloo thanks for the question.

Per the slackr_bot docs:

[slackr_bot] Takes an expr, evaluates it and sends the output to a Slack chat destination via the webhook API

slackr, slackr_msg, etc. do something different. Instead of taking a webhook and being attached to a single channel, they leverage a scoped bot or user token to post to channels in the workspace. On the back end, this means that the request getting sent to the Slack API is not just a webhook URL, but instead relies on Slack API methods such as chat.Postmessage to post messages, plots, upload files, etc. Fundamentally, these are different tasks, which is why slackr_bot exists for sending webhook messages and the other slackr* functions exist for using other Slack API methods.

Does that answer your question?

You can learn more about the Slack API here: https://api.slack.com/start and you can read about individual methods here: https://api.slack.com/methods

[mrkaye97]

Also, FWIW, slackr, slackr_msg, and slackr_bot are all very similar in practice. It's mostly the other slackr* functions that differ significantly. For the most part, you can accomplish almost anything you could with slackr or slackr_msg with slackr_bot, and slackr_bot requires significantly fewer scopes to do so. This means that slackr_bot is generally easier to set up, more secure, etc.

[Bisaloo]

But the issue is that slackr_bot() doesn't allow posting just a comment as far as I can tell. Because it has been designed the idea that people will use it to evaluate R expressions, it will echo this expression alongside the result and format it as a quote.

Another way to formulate my question/request: could there be an easy function (as easy as slackr_bot()), i.e., using just the webhook mechanism, to post a simple comment? Do we need to complexity around slack_msg()? Wouldn't we be better off with an interface similar to slackr_bot()?

[mrkaye97]

I'm not totally sure what you mean by "just a comment". You mean you want behavior like this?

slackr_bot("foobar")

such that in Slack you just see:

foobar

? slackr_bot() should already allow for this behavior, but let me know what I'm missing

[Bisaloo]

Ah, I think the problem comes from the fact that I don't want to do directly

slackr_bot("Hello world")

but

test <- "Hello world"
slackr_bot(test)

because the string is created programmatically.

In this situation, the output is

> test [1] Hello world

which is not what I want.

[mrkaye97]

Interesting, okay. I see what you mean. I think this is a bug, but I'm not 100% sure. When a get a minute, I'll look into it and report back.

The confusing thing to me is that the internals for slackr() and slackr_bot() are almost identical, so I'm not sure how you'd get this behavior with slackr_bot() when I can't repro it with slackr().

Regardless, thanks for the bug report, and I'll report back

[mrkaye97]

Hey @Bisaloo -- just circling back. So I tested this out, and my mental model was a little bit off. slackr and slackr_bot evaluate expressions the same way, which is why you get the behavior that you do. slackr_msg will allow you to send the text as if it were just text (i.e. not an object with a name and a value), but if you're using a bot token, slackr_msg won't work for you. That seems to be what you were describing in your previous comments. One possible solution to this would be to introduce a slackr_bot_msg function that operates like slackr_msg. I could do this, and will consider it.

I'll let you know if I make that change

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