slack-web-out lacking response object when using files.upload

[minuq]

How to reproduce: Create a msg object and pipe it into the slack-web-out node:

msg.topic = "files.upload"
msg.payload = {
    channels: "foo",
    file: content,
    filename: "filename",
}
return msg

Files get uploaded to my slack channel fine, however according to the documentation a file object should be returned which according to slack-web-out node info should be in msg.payload.

slack-web-out returns a slackState, but no payload

[travisghansen]

Interesting. Can you deploy with SLACK_DEBUG=true env var? The console (as in actual terminal/stdout) should dump full req/res and we’ll see what we get.

[minuq]

First of all there's

2020-05-12T18:24:29.995307732Z 2020-5-12 20:24:29 - [debug] slack
2020-05-12T18:24:29.998648470Z unable_to_rtm_start xoxb-789...n85
2020-05-12T18:24:29.998667590Z  { Error: An API error occurred: not_allowed_token_type
2020-05-12T18:24:29.998670746Z     at platformErrorFromResult (/data/node_modules/@slack/client/dist/WebClient.js:770:42)
2020-05-12T18:24:29.998673712Z     at __await.makeRequest.then (/data/node_modules/@slack/client/dist/WebClient.js:484:39)
2020-05-12T18:24:29.998676337Z     at process._tickCallback (internal/process/next_tick.js:68:7)
2020-05-12T18:24:29.998678783Z   code: 'slackclient_platform_error',
2020-05-12T18:24:29.998681179Z   data: { ok: false, error: 'not_allowed_token_type' } }
2020-05-12T18:24:30.000759817Z ---------------------------------------------------------------------

when deploying, but i guess that's due to my token not supporting RTM (it's "the new kind").

2020-05-12T18:31:07.419656260Z 2020-5-12 20:31:7 - [debug] slack
2020-05-12T18:31:07.420090151Z slack-web-out incomiming message
2020-05-12T18:31:07.420105050Z  { topic: 'files.upload',
2020-05-12T18:31:07.420177101Z   payload:
2020-05-12T18:31:07.420181117Z    { channels: 'bastelecke',
2020-05-12T18:31:07.420185898Z      file: <Buffer 74 65 73 74 0a>,
2020-05-12T18:31:07.420190173Z      filename: 'Original.txt',
2020-05-12T18:31:07.420194222Z      thread_ts: '1589308267.042100',
2020-05-12T18:31:07.420198296Z      unfurl_media: false,
2020-05-12T18:31:07.420202307Z      initial_comment: 'bla',
2020-05-12T18:31:07.420206297Z      title: 'Original.txt' },
2020-05-12T18:31:07.420210442Z   slackState: { channels: {}, members: {}, bots: { BRPBBT4Q2: [Object] } },
2020-05-12T18:31:07.420465255Z   parts:
2020-05-12T18:31:07.420469248Z    { id: '687fc95a.c5c558',
2020-05-12T18:31:07.420473274Z      type: 'array',
2020-05-12T18:31:07.420477250Z      count: 1,
2020-05-12T18:31:07.420481269Z      len: 1,
2020-05-12T18:31:07.420485288Z      index: 0 },
2020-05-12T18:31:07.420489345Z   _msgid: 'f4f8701e.8dc33' }
2020-05-12T18:31:07.423740304Z [WARN]  @slack/client:WebClient:0 http request failed The first argument must be one of type string or Buffer. Received type boolean
2020-05-12T18:31:07.423781038Z ---------------------------------------------------------------------
2020-05-12T18:31:07.423788235Z ---------------------------------------------------------------------
2020-05-12T18:31:07.423792836Z 2020-5-12 20:31:7 - [debug] slack
2020-05-12T18:31:07.423797147Z slack-web-out call
2020-05-12T18:31:07.423801318Z  files.upload { channels: 'bastelecke',
2020-05-12T18:31:07.423805545Z   file: <Buffer 74 65 73 74 0a>,
2020-05-12T18:31:07.423810136Z   filename: 'Original.txt',
2020-05-12T18:31:07.423814258Z   thread_ts: '1589308267.042100',
2020-05-12T18:31:07.423818380Z   unfurl_media: false,
2020-05-12T18:31:07.423822578Z   initial_comment: 'bla',
2020-05-12T18:31:07.423826702Z   title: 'Original.txt' }
2020-05-12T18:31:07.423830774Z ---------------------------------------------------------------------
2020-05-12T18:31:07.423834967Z ---------------------------------------------------------------------
2020-05-12T18:31:07.423839189Z 2020-5-12 20:31:7 - [debug] slack
2020-05-12T18:31:07.423843288Z slack-web-out error response
2020-05-12T18:31:07.423847372Z  undefined
2020-05-12T18:31:07.423851503Z ---------------------------------------------------------------------

The files appear on my thread after a slight delay, at first i thought about it being a timing issue ("node awaiting an immediate response while the slack api is still processing the request" sort of issue)

[travisghansen]

Ok for some reason it’s throwing an error.

If you’re able to tweak the running code at all in your environment then remove .data from here: https://github.com/yayadrian/node-red-slack/blob/9136f5f9a6489f1be4268a9d285ca026ffa690e2/slackpost.js#L1311

If not I’ll fire it up and see if I get a failure in my setup or not.

[minuq]

I changed line 1311 to what you proposed, output looks pretty much the same to me

2020-05-13T08:07:53.690825148Z slack-web-out incoming message
2020-05-13T08:07:53.690843868Z  { topic: 'files.upload',
2020-05-13T08:07:53.690966479Z   payload:
2020-05-13T08:07:53.690971566Z    { channels: 'bastelecke',
2020-05-13T08:07:53.690976720Z      file: <Buffer 74 65 73 74 0a>,
2020-05-13T08:07:53.690982210Z      filename: 'Original.txt',
2020-05-13T08:07:53.690987389Z      thread_ts: '1589357273.000800',
2020-05-13T08:07:53.690992601Z      unfurl_media: false,
2020-05-13T08:07:53.690997690Z      initial_comment: 'bla',
2020-05-13T08:07:53.691002837Z      title: 'Original.txt' },
2020-05-13T08:07:53.691008141Z   slackState: { channels: {}, members: {}, bots: { BRPBBT4Q2: [Object] } },
2020-05-13T08:07:53.691370137Z   parts:
2020-05-13T08:07:53.691375352Z    { id: '9ecd2e98.91e36', type: 'array', count: 1, len: 1, index: 0 },
2020-05-13T08:07:53.691380802Z   _msgid: 'f0022556.206948' }
2020-05-13T08:07:53.691403071Z ---------------------------------------------------------------------
2020-05-13T08:07:53.691409879Z ---------------------------------------------------------------------
2020-05-13T08:07:53.691415288Z 2020-5-13 10:7:53 - [debug] slack
2020-05-13T08:07:53.691430902Z slack-web-out call
2020-05-13T08:07:53.691436289Z  files.upload { channels: 'bastelecke',
2020-05-13T08:07:53.691441569Z   file: <Buffer 74 65 73 74 0a>,
2020-05-13T08:07:53.691447054Z   filename: 'Original.txt',
2020-05-13T08:07:53.691452296Z   thread_ts: '1589357273.000800',
2020-05-13T08:07:53.691457495Z   unfurl_media: false,
2020-05-13T08:07:53.691462644Z   initial_comment: 'bla',
2020-05-13T08:07:53.691467806Z   title: 'Original.txt' }
2020-05-13T08:07:53.691473066Z ---------------------------------------------------------------------
2020-05-13T08:07:53.696190353Z [WARN]  @slack/client:WebClient:0 http request failed The first argument must be one of type string or Buffer. Received type boolean
2020-05-13T08:07:53.696340620Z ---------------------------------------------------------------------
2020-05-13T08:07:53.696348905Z 2020-5-13 10:7:53 - [debug] slack
2020-05-13T08:07:53.696351768Z slack-web-out error response
2020-05-13T08:07:53.696354642Z ---------------------------------------------------------------------```

[minuq]

After some digging in the @slack/client files and forcing the body argument to string that files.upload does not accept POST data in json format and requires an URL encoded body.

Note that i'm way out of my comfortzone here: https://github.com/yayadrian/node-red-slack/blob/9136f5f9a6489f1be4268a9d285ca026ffa690e2/slackpost.js#L1289-L1296

Adding

          case "files.upload":
            let urlParameters = Object.entries(options)
              .map((e) => e.join("="))
              .join("&");
            options.text = urlParameters;
            break;

to the switch() resulted in instant uploads of files, opposed to the 30s-2min delay that usually happens and a valid response from slack. This however only works for raw text and i've got no clue how to send multipart data :)

msg.topic = "files.upload"
msg.payload = {
    channels: "foo",
    content: "bar",
    filename: "filename",
}
return msg

[travisghansen]

Yeah I assumed it had something to do with the special content type handling etc. I’ll do some digging on this and see if we can’t create something that’s nice and easy to use. Thanks!