Node-slack-sdk: sending attachments / images?

[dcsan]

the demo examples here just send a text response, vis:

+       response = text.split('').reverse().join('');
+       channel.send(response);
+       console.log('@%s responded with "%s"', slack.self.name, response);

can this node package be used to send other types of messages, or attachments?

I've tried sending JSON like:

 if (reply) {
        // channel.send(reply.string);
        msgpack = {
          type: "message",
          text: reply.string,
          icon_url: "http://laorquesta.mx/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/bikers-300x225.jpg",
          attachment: {
            "color": "#36a64f",
            "title": "drifter bot",
            "title_link": "http://superscriptjs.com/starter/quickstart"
          }
        }
        // channel.send(JSON.stringify(msgpack))
        channel.send(msgpack)

but just get an error back:

{ code: 2, msg: 'message text is missing' }

[evansolomon]

Any argument to channel.send is treated as text.

Technically you could send binary data over the websocket, but I the library doesn't really support it and I imagine it wouldn't show up on the other end in a useful way.

[dcsan]

so channel.sendtMessage should send attachments but i haven't been able to get that to work via the web API either. is there a working example/json anywhere? I couldn't find.

this is what i'm sending:

{ type: 'message',
  text: 'TEST MESSAGE',
  icon_url: 'http://lorempixel.com/48/48/',
  attachments: 
   [ { title: '*Title*',
       fallback: 'Title: testing *right now!*',
       text: 'Testing *right now!*',
       mrkdwn_in: [Object] } ],
  token: 'xoxp-2662813184-3515663524-3515664302-b8a82e',
  channel: 'C03F38ZCN' }
Ignoring... { id: 1,
  type: 'message',
  channel: 'C03F38ZCN',
  text: 'TEST MESSAGE' }

postMessage result: { ok: true, channel: 'C03F38ZCN', ts: '1422399323.000004' } 

and what i see:

is there a different type: 'message', ?

[evansolomon]

Sorry, I don't quite understand the example here. Can you post more complete (ideally runnable) code?

[dcsan]

here's the method which sends the JSON above.

slack._apiCall  

is a method in your lib.

function testAttachment(channel) {

  var att2 = {
    "title": "*Title*",
    "fallback": "Title: testing *right now!*",
    "text": "Testing *right now!*",

    "mrkdwn_in": ["text", "title", "fallback"]
  }

  msgpack = {
    type: "message",
    text: "TEST MESSAGE",
    icon_url: "http://lorempixel.com/48/48/",
    attachments: [att2]
  }

  msgpack.token = token
  msgpack.channel = channel.id

  console.log("msgpack", msgpack);
  slack._apiCall("chat.postMessage", msgpack, function(err, res){
    console.error("postMessage result:", err, res)
  })

}

[paulhammond]

I think #15 (along with some changes to the server documented in slackhq/hubot-slack#148) will fix this? Can you confirm?

[podviaznikov]

I think I'm having the same problem.

I was able to send attachments before using Incoming Webhook functionality, but can't do it with Web API.

Should

{
    "fallback": "Required plain-text summary of the attachment.",

    "color": "#36a64f",

    "pretext": "Optional text that appears above the attachment block",

    "author_name": "Bobby Tables",
    "author_link": "http://flickr.com/bobby/",
    "author_icon": "http://flickr.com/icons/bobby.jpg",

    "title": "Slack API Documentation",
    "title_link": "https://api.slack.com/",

    "text": "Optional text that appears within the attachment",

    "fields": [
        {
            "title": "Priority",
            "value": "High",
            "short": false
        }
    ],

    "image_url": "http://my-website.com/path/to/image.jpg"
}

from https://api.slack.com/docs/attachments work with Web API?

[podviaznikov]

Does anyone know when this will be fixed? And https://github.com/slackhq/hubot-slack/pull/148 to be merged.

[bobalazek]

Any news on this? Seems that it still doesn't work on the Web API.

[mmattax]

I ran into this as well. Attachments do not work when using the web api (though I'm not even using the node client, I'm making a raw curl request), switching to an incoming webhook made the attachments appear.

Something is broken at a lower level than the client. Hope it gets fixed.

[bobalazek]

I found out, what the problem was / is. You NEED to JSON encode the 'attachments' argument, so the 'attachments' is actually a string and not an object. Then it should work. At least for me that worked.

[jkresner]

@bobalazek stringifying worked thanks. Pretty peculiar solution :)

[ghost]

The >= 2.0.0 release will now check this for you, so should be a little easier to use, you can see where it's doing that here