How to connect to Slack via slackr package in R - r

Question

I'm trying to set up the slackr package in R to allow me to post to Slack through RStudio, but it seems the connection isn't working.
I've installed the package, set up the required App in my Slack Workspace, have a webhook and access tokens, manually granted all of Scopes needed in Slack, set up the config file and have confirmed via the cmd line that this works by sending a message to the channel through that successfully. Unfortunately nothing is working via R.
slackr_msg(paste("test"),
,channel = "#it-reports")
slackr_ims(api_token="xoxb-...")
When run the above both produce Error: Join columns must be present in data. x Problem with 'id'. which I can't find anybody else experiencing. It sounds like an issue with the user, but the app is in the channel, has permission to access all public channels, and this error appears regardless of whether I try and send it via my logged in account or just from the bot. When I just try and return something simple like listed channels with slackr_channels I get NULL. I've tried both OAuth Access Token and Bot User OAuth Access Token with all permissions needed in the scope but neither are letting me access Slack.

Answer 1

I'm not sure you still need an answer, but in case anyone else is looking - I've run into the same issue. I think the underlying method that your slack channel name "#my_excellent_named_channel" is converted to the channel id is deprecated.
"https://slack.com/api/channels.list" has been changed to "https://slack.com/api/conversations.list" in the methods.
I couldn't find a better way than brute forcing my channel id because I only need to publish to a notifications channel.
nextCursor=""
for (j in c(1:10)){
resp<-GET(url = "https://slack.com/api/conversations.list",
query = list(token=YOUR_BOT_TOKEN,
cursor=nextCursor
))
foo=fromJSON(content(resp, as="text"))
for (i in c(1:100)){
if(foo$channels[[i]]$name %like% 'my_excellent_named_channel'){
print(paste(nextCursor, "\n"))
print(paste(i,foo$channels[[i]]$name,"\n"))
print(paste(foo$channels[[i]]$id))
}
}
nextCursor=foo$response_metadata[[1]]
}
You'll probably need to run through a few more than the 10 top level iterations, but if you go too fast it locks you out. I then just exchanged the channel name in my config file for the channel id, and rewrote the functions to avoid the conversion.
Here's slackMsg (conversion of slackrMsg)
slackMsg=function (txt = "", channel = Sys.getenv("SLACK_CHANNEL"), username = Sys.getenv("SLACK_USERNAME"),
icon_emoji = Sys.getenv("SLACK_ICON_EMOJI"), api_token = Sys.getenv("SLACK_API_TOKEN"),
...)
{
if (api_token == "") {
stop("No token specified. Did you forget to call slackr_setup()?",
call. = FALSE)
}
if (icon_emoji != "") {
icon_emoji <- sprintf(", \"icon_emoji\": \"%s\"", icon_emoji)
}
output <- paste0(txt, collapse = "\n\n")
loc <- Sys.getlocale("LC_CTYPE")
Sys.setlocale("LC_CTYPE", "C")
on.exit(Sys.setlocale("LC_CTYPE", loc))
resp <- POST(url = "https://slack.com/api/chat.postMessage",
body = list(token = api_token, channel = channel,
username = username, icon_emoji = icon_emoji, text = output,
as_user = TRUE, link_names = 1, ...))
warn_for_status(resp)
return(invisible())
}
Don't forget to give your bot chat.write permissions in your Slack App.