Slack-Ruby-Bot

A generic Slack bot framework written in Ruby. This library does all the heavy lifting so you can focus on implementing slack bot commands, without introducing unnecessary requirements or limitations. It's a Slack bot boilerplate.

Usage

A Minimal Bot

Gemfile

source 'http://rubygems.org'

gem 'slack-ruby-bot'

pongbot.rb

require 'slack-ruby-bot'

module PongBot
  class App < SlackRubyBot::App
  end

  class Ping < SlackRubyBot::Commands::Base
    command 'ping' do |data, _match|
      send_message data.channel, 'pong'
    end
  end
end

PongBot::App.instance.run

After registering the bot, run with SLACK_API_KEY=... bundle exec ruby pongbot.rb. Have the bot join a channel and send it a ping.

A Production Bot

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. See our Writing a Production Bot tutorial for more information.

More Involved Examples

The following examples of production-grade bots based on slack-ruby-bot are listed in growing order of complexity.

slack-mathbot: Slack integration with math.
slack-gamebot: A generic game bot for ping-pong, chess, etc.

Commands and Operators

Bots are addressed by name and respond to commands and operators. By default a command class responds, case-insensitively, to its name. A class called Phone that inherits from SlackRubyBot::Commands::Base responds to phone and Phone and calls the call method when implemented.

class Phone < SlackRubyBot::Commands::Base
  command 'call'

  def self.call(data, _match)
    send_message data.channel, 'called'
  end
end

To respond to custom commands and to disable automatic class name matching, use the command keyword. The following command responds to call and 呼び出し (call in Japanese).

class Phone < SlackRubyBot::Commands::Base
  command 'call'
  command '呼び出し'

  def self.call(data, _match)
    send_message data.channel, 'called'
  end
end

You can combine multiple commands and use a block to implement them.

class Phone < SlackRubyBot::Commands::Base
  command 'call', '呼び出し' do |data, _match|
    send_message data.channel, 'called'
  end
end

Command match data includes match['bot'], match['command'] and match['expression']. The bot match always checks against the SlackRubyBot::Config.user setting.

Operators are 1-letter long and are similar to commands. They don't require addressing a bot nor separating an operator from its arguments. The following class responds to =2+2.

class Calculator < SlackRubyBot::Commands::Base
  operator '=' do |_data, _match|
    # implementation detail
  end
end

Operator match data includes match['operator'] and match['expression']. The bot match always checks against the SlackRubyBot::Config.user setting.

Generic Routing

Commands and operators are generic versions of bot routes. You can respond to just about anything by defining a custom route.

class Weather < SlackRubyBot::Commands::Base
  match /^How is the weather in (<?location>\w*)\?$/ do |data, match|
    send_message data.channel, "The weather in #{match[:location]} is nice."
  end
end

Built-In Commands

Slack-ruby-bot comes with several built-in commands. You can re-define built-in commands, normally, as described above.

[bot name]

This is also known as the default command. Shows bot version and links.

[bot name] hi

Politely says 'hi' back.

[bot name] help

Get help.

RSpec Shared Behaviors

Slack-ruby-bot ships with a number of shared RSpec behaviors that can be used in your RSpec tests. Require 'slack-ruby-bot/rspec' in your spec_helper.rb.

behaves like a slack bot: A bot quacks like a Slack Ruby bot.
respond with slack message: The bot responds with a message.
respond with error: An exception is raised inside a bot command.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.

Copyright and License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.