Hubot-slack: Send Direct Message from user name

Created on 28 Jul 2016 · 30Comments · Source: slackapi/hubot-slack

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[x] I've read and agree to the Code of Conduct.
[x] I've searched for any related issues and avoided creating a duplicate issue.

Description

Cannot send direct message from the user name / user id.
Direct channel id needed (Starting with "D")
The only workaround i found is to direct message the bot and then store this direct channel id for later reuse...

Reproducible in:

hubot-pokemongo version: dev branch
OS version(s): *
Device(s): *

Steps to reproduce:

Download hubot-pokemongo from the dev branch (npm version can't handle v4 of hubot-slack at all, rawText removed)
cd /path/to/hubot && npm install /path/to/hubot-pokemongo
Add "hubot-pokemongo" to your external-script.json
set hubot-slack to version 4.0.1
start hubot with the slack adapter
In slack, /invite @hubot in channel, setup an address with pogo add 43.6043278 1.446728(and wish that niantic & pokevision servers are up) (This address should get some pokemon, as it's in the center of city)
pogo timer 1 and pogo range 1000 to faster result

Expected result:

robot.messageRoom(username, message) send direct message to the username
(Working with hubot-slack 3.4.2)

Actual result:

robot.messageRoom(username, message) throws errors on the channel id.
Could only send direct message with the Direct message/channel ID (starting with D).
Cannot "self open" direct message channel.

Full error : Unhandled rejection SlackRTMError: invalid channel id

Attachments:

The call to robot.messageRoom (or robot.send) can be found here

Thanks !

bug

Source

Edznux

Most helpful comment

Having the same issue, here is my current workaround.

room = robot.adapter.client.rtm.dataStore.getDMByName res.message.user.name
robot.messageRoom room.id, "Hello, this is a private message!"

AvonGenesis on 10 Aug 2016

👍6

All 30 comments

Having the same issue, here is my current workaround.

room = robot.adapter.client.rtm.dataStore.getDMByName res.message.user.name
robot.messageRoom room.id, "Hello, this is a private message!"

AvonGenesis on 10 Aug 2016

👍6

Note that even with @AvonGenesis's "fix", hubot does not open a new DM channel when one doesn't exist yet. I swapped out the code in hubot-help to use the code above, and I get "can't read property id of undefined" error:

Sep 13 08:38:10 host1 hubot: [Tue Sep 13 2016 08:38:10 GMT-0700 (PDT)] ERROR TypeError: Cannot read property 'id' of undefined
Sep 13 08:38:10 host1 hubot: at TextListener.callback (/home/hubot/my_bot/node_modules/hubot-help/src/help.coffee:78:7, <js>:28:38)
Sep 13 08:38:10 host1 hubot: at executeListener (/home/hubot/my_bot/node_modules/hubot/src/listener.coffee:65:11, <js>:53:19)
Sep 13 08:38:10 host1 hubot: at allDone (/home/hubot/my_bot/node_modules/hubot/src/middleware.coffee:44:37, <js>:34:16)
Sep 13 08:38:10 host1 hubot: at /home/hubot/my_bot/node_modules/async/lib/async.js:274:13
Sep 13 08:38:10 host1 hubot: at Object.async.eachSeries (/home/hubot/my_bot/node_modules/async/lib/async.js:142:20)
Sep 13 08:38:10 host1 hubot: at Object.async.reduce (/home/hubot/my_bot/node_modules/async/lib/async.js:268:15)
Sep 13 08:38:10 host1 hubot: at /home/hubot/my_bot/node_modules/hubot/src/middleware.coffee:49:7, <js>:37:22
Sep 13 08:38:10 host1 hubot: at _combinedTickCallback (internal/process/next_tick.js:67:7)
Sep 13 08:38:10 host1 hubot: at process._tickCallback (internal/process/next_tick.js:98:9)

iancward on 13 Sep 2016

The interesting thing here is that I'm not sure why you would even try to use a DM in this case—I was attempting to do so, then ran into what @iancward did. Then I realized that targeting a user's ID does the same thing, without the previous instantiation of a DM channel with the bot being required:

getUser = (msg, bot, userInputUser) ->
  try
    user = bot.adapter.client.rtm.dataStore.getUserByName(userInputUser)
    if user
      logger "getUser: Got results for #{userInputUser} by name"
      return user
  try
    user = bot.adapter.client.rtm.dataStore.getUserById(userInputUser)
    if user
      logger "getUser: Got results for #{userInputUser} by id"
      return user

  logger "getUser ERROR: No results for #{userInputUser}"

bot.messageRoom getUser(msg, bot, username).id, message

To me, this makes the usage and/or necessity of DM IDs basically useless.

qualman on 13 Sep 2016

@qualman I don't know if I understand; were you able to find a way to send a message to a user that didn't have a DM channel opened previously? I'm building a custom script and had to use robot.adapter.client.web.im.open to open a new DM before I could robot.messageRoom room.id, "message".

iancward on 13 Sep 2016

@iancward correct. Using the above (which is just a simple try to resolve the user by name and id) you get the user object back. Then you can just use the messageRoom function to target the user's id (U12345678) and it works just the same as targeting the DM ID (D12345678), without having to dink around with initiating a DM session and getting an ID. I.e., it sends a user, whom the bot has never communicated with before, a DM.

Unless this is an unintended ability or something, I don't see why you would try to use DM when you can just target the user ID.

qualman on 13 Sep 2016

👍1

I actually never had problem with getUserbyName. If you send the User ID to messageRoom, you get Unhandled rejection SlackRTMError: invalid channel id if the channel is not yet opened.

Sep 13 09:03:00 host1 hubot: [Tue Sep 13 2016 09:03:00 GMT-0700 (PDT)] DEBUG Sending to U24L4SZJ6: action is: cheese
Sep 13 09:03:00 host1 hubot: [Tue Sep 13 2016 09:03:00 GMT-0700 (PDT)] DEBUG ~~~~~~~
Sep 13 09:03:00 host1 hubot: [Tue Sep 13 2016 09:03:00 GMT-0700 (PDT)] DEBUG action is: cheese
Sep 13 09:03:00 host1 hubot: Unhandled rejection SlackRTMError: invalid channel id
Sep 13 09:03:00 host1 hubot: at RTMClient.handleMessageAck [as _handleMessageAck] (/home/hubot/my_bot/node_modules/@slack/client/lib/clients/rtm/client.js:497:40)
Sep 13 09:03:00 host1 hubot: at RTMClient._handleWsMessageViaEventHandler (/home/hubot/my_bot/node_modules/@slack/client/lib/clients/rtm/client.js:460:12)
Sep 13 09:03:00 host1 hubot: at RTMClient.handleWsMessage (/home/hubot/my_bot/node_modules/@slack/client/lib/clients/rtm/client.js:420:10)
Sep 13 09:03:00 host1 hubot: at WebSocket.wrapper (/home/hubot/my_bot/node_modules/@slack/client/node_modules/lodash/lodash.js:4762:19)
Sep 13 09:03:00 host1 hubot: at emitTwo (events.js:106:13)
Sep 13 09:03:00 host1 hubot: at WebSocket.emit (events.js:191:7)
Sep 13 09:03:00 host1 hubot: at Receiver.ontext (/home/hubot/my_bot/node_modules/ws/lib/WebSocket.js:841:10)
Sep 13 09:03:00 host1 hubot: at /home/hubot/my_bot/node_modules/ws/lib/Receiver.js:536:18
Sep 13 09:03:00 host1 hubot: at Receiver.applyExtensions (/home/hubot/my_bot/node_modules/ws/lib/Receiver.js:371:5)
Sep 13 09:03:00 host1 hubot: at /home/hubot/my_bot/node_modules/ws/lib/Receiver.js:508:14
Sep 13 09:03:00 host1 hubot: at Receiver.flush (/home/hubot/my_bot/node_modules/ws/lib/Receiver.js:347:3)
Sep 13 09:03:00 host1 hubot: at Receiver.opcodes.1.finish (/home/hubot/my_bot/node_modules/ws/lib/Receiver.js:541:12)
Sep 13 09:03:00 host1 hubot: at Receiver.<anonymous> (/home/hubot/my_bot/node_modules/ws/lib/Receiver.js:499:31)
Sep 13 09:03:00 host1 hubot: at Receiver.add (/home/hubot/my_bot/node_modules/ws/lib/Receiver.js:103:24)
Sep 13 09:03:00 host1 hubot: at TLSSocket.realHandler (/home/hubot/my_bot/node_modules/ws/lib/WebSocket.js:825:20)
Sep 13 09:03:00 host1 hubot: at emitOne (events.js:96:13)
Sep 13 09:03:00 host1 hubot: at TLSSocket.emit (events.js:188:7)
Sep 13 09:03:00 host1 hubot: at readableAddChunk (_stream_readable.js:177:18)
Sep 13 09:03:00 host1 hubot: at TLSSocket.Readable.push (_stream_readable.js:135:10)
Sep 13 09:03:00 host1 hubot: at TLSWrap.onread (net.js:542:20)

iancward on 13 Sep 2016

@iancward are you using the adapter from npm? I was getting this issue too, then I realized that hubot-slack in npm hasn't gone to v4 yet, so I started targeting package.json here at the repo. Once I did that, user ID messaging worked.

qualman on 13 Sep 2016

you mean hubot-slack on npm? https://www.npmjs.com/package/hubot-slack is version 4.0.4.
And I have this in package.json:
"hubot-slack": "^4.0.4"

iancward on 13 Sep 2016

Oh, i tried a bit ago, so it must have been updated since then.

In that case, I am very confused. I am confident that targeting by user ID is working here, I'm on effective version 4.0.2 ("hubot-slack": "git://github.com/slackhq/hubot-slack.git#825de6b",). Maybe one of the contributors can speak to this...

qualman on 13 Sep 2016

Note: Sending a message to a DM Id requires a DM to have been opened first. Sending a message to a User Id will automatically create the DM in the background, and succeed. It is recommended to _always_ initiate DMs via User Id, rather than DM Id when possible.