Direct message when command run in public channel

[DavBE]

Hi,

I've been playing around with php-slack-bot and I like it so far. However, I have a question I would like to ask : is there any way to respond to a user running a command in a public channel by direct message ?

Thanks,

David

[jclg]

Hello David,

I am glad you like it.

If you want the bot to respond to a user by direct message from a command typed in a public channel, you have to get the DM channel ID of the user from the context. For example :

    protected function execute($message, $context) {
        if (isset($context['ims'])) {
            foreach ($context['ims'] as $im) {
                if ($im['user'] == $this->getCurrentUser()) {
                    $this->send($im['id'], null, 'My message');
                }
            }
        }
    }

Note that a DM channel must be opened between the user and the bot.

I just added a method getImIdFromUserId which does the same.

    protected function execute($message, $context) {
        $this->send($this->getImIdFromUserId($this->getCurrentUser()), null, 'My message');
    }

Please let me know if it works for you

[DavBE]

Hi !

Note that a DM channel must be opened between the user and the bot.

I understand. What I would like to achieve is to open the channel between the user and the bot when a command is issued on the public channel.

I managed to do it using the im.open method (https://api.slack.com/methods/im.open) but it is quite messy because I'm doint it from outside of the bot code. I would love for this to be integrated in the main code so that I could simply open the channel and send a message to it within a command (if that makes sense).

[jclg]

Unfortunately the project is not complete and lacks the support for API methods like im.open.
Contributions are more than welcome so feel free to open a pull request for this so it can be integrated in the project.

[DavBE]

I see. I would not dare to open a pull request because in my opinion, the way I implemented the feature is dirty. Anyways, here is what I have done (it might be useful to someone passing by, or you might want to implement it correctly if you have too much free time 😃) :

I created a SlackAPI.php file in src subdirectory :

abstract class SlackAPI {

    public function getIMChannel($userId) {
        $client = new \GuzzleHttp\Client();
        $url = 'https://slack.com/api/im.open?';
        $url.= 'token='.'xoxb-41213195428-Zs1GnUPoj1M3fqE18yJl39T2';
        $url.= '&user='.$userId;
        $res = $client->request('GET', $url);
        $obj = json_decode($res->getBody(), true);
        if (isset($obj['channel']['id'])) {
            return $obj['channel']['id'];
        }
        else {
            return "";
        }
    }

}

Token is hardcoded as you can see, also there is surely a better way to handle the value returned (direct message channel id or empty string), etc.

I then reference this file in the main script :

require 'src/SlackAPI.php';

Finally I open a direct message channel like this in a bot command :

$imchannel = \SlackAPI::getIMChannel($this->getCurrentUser());
$this->send($imchannel, null, "Hello !");

I use the guzzlehttp/guzzle package so it should be required :

composer require guzzlehttp/guzzle

Hopefully someone will make this better.