Python-slack-sdk: Unable to format links

[vsimon]

I'm finding that I'm unable to format any links using the slack_client.api_call method. The link just appears as text. Also tried putting the link in text, title, fields, and pre_text but I got the same results.

snippet as follows:

att = [{
    "fallback": "fallback",
    "text": "<https://honeybadger.io/path/to/event/|ReferenceError>",
}]
slack_client.api_call("chat.postMessage", parse="full", as_user=True, channel='sample-channel', text="sample-text", attachments=json.dumps(att))

[sww314]

I have the same problem. The formatting listed here https://api.slack.com/docs/formatting does not seem to work.

[ghyun]

+1

[atomicben]

+1

[yq314]

+1

[yq314]

is this repos still under maintenance?

[atjones0011]

It looks like the last PR was merged over two months ago. There are four PRs that have been opened and are still open since that last merge.

I will work on a PR for this issue this evening, but I'm not sure that it will be merged anytime soon.

[atjones0011]

Upon digging into the API docs for formatting, I found that links should be sent without < and >. If you do this, Slack will properly format the link to be shared as a hyperlink in the target channel. I do not see a way to set the label for a hyperlink via the API. This is because < is converted to < and > is converted to >.

[todd-alexion]

+1

[ajferrick]

Sorry for the confusion here. I think the issue, unfortunately, has more to do with the unfortunately named parse=full specification. If you do not specify a parse mode, then by default, we will properly display the link with its display text. I tested this snippet today and had success:

att = [{
    "fallback": "fallback",
    "text": "<https://honeybadger.io/path/to/event/|ReferenceError>",
}]

# Remove parse=full from the kwargs
slack_client.api_call("chat.postMessage", as_user=True, channel='sample-channel', text="sample-text", attachments=json.dumps(att))

This should give you a link with the link text you specified.

Some background:

You're all perfectly correct in specifying a link in text as <http://example.com|My Link Text>. This follows our message formatting spec for links. If you do not specify a parse mode, then by default, we will properly display the link with its display text.

With parse=full, we treat the messaging control characters (i.e. &, >, <) as plaintext, and convert them into their HTML entities (i.e. &, <, >). And perhaps confusingly, we will find any URLs, channel names, and usernames in the message text and turn them into simple links. That is, if something like http://www.example.com appears in the message text, Slack will simply turn that into a link.

I admit this is a little weird at first. Please feel free to reach out to me at ajf [at] slack-corp dot com if you have questions!

[ajferrick]

Feel free to follow up with a specific problem that might reopen this issue! 🙌