How to improve formatting of slack messages using slackr? - r

Question

I'm using slackr to send alert messages to a Slack channel. It works great except the message format is not great and I want to improve it.
install_github("hrbrmstr/slackr")
library(slackr)
slackr_setup(channel="#alerts", username="Mark Davis",
incoming_webhook_url = "https://hooks.slack.com/services/T31P8UDAB/BCH4HKQSC/*********",
api_token = "*********", echo = F)
alert="On Monday, 2018-09-03 # 2pm Pacific..."
slackr(alert)
Here is an example of how a message from slackr looks in Slack:
Here is an example of how I'd like it to look:
slackr doesn't seem to have many options in the way of formatting. I was thinking of building an image and inserting that, but I'm having trouble building an image out of a text file using R.
Perhaps there is another api I could call that could take my text and format it for slack?
I'm open to any suggestions.
Addendum:
Slackr has an option to upload files, so my latest attempt is to create an image from the text message and upload that object.
I am able to create a png file from the text message using the magick library. I created an image with a colored background, and I simply add the message text to the image:
library(magick)
alert_picture <- image_read('alert_480x150_dark_red.png')
alert_picture=image_annotate(alert_picture, DreamCloud_Alert, size = 20, gravity = "southwest",
color = "white", location = "+10+10")
image_write(alert_picture, path = "alert_picture.png", format = "png")
The image looks pretty good (although there doesn't seem to be an easy way to bold or underline specific words in the message), but the obstacle now is that I can't get the upload command to work.
slackr_upload(filename = "alert_picture.png")
I don't get any error messages but nothing is uploaded to slack.

Answer 1

I got around this issue by using the httr package to execute the post image function to slack.
Thanks to Adil B. for providing the solution:
Post Image to Slack Using HTTR package in R

Answer 2

I am not sure this is what you meant, but I solved allowing formatting like in a regular slack message by altering the slackr_bot() function and just removing the 2 sets of 3 back-ticks at the end of the code where it says text. Then just call it slackr_bot1() or something, and then you can post formatted messages. This is the function after the back-ticks removal:
slackr_bot1 <- function(...,
channel=Sys.getenv("SLACK_CHANNEL"),
username=Sys.getenv("SLACK_USERNAME"),
icon_emoji=Sys.getenv("SLACK_ICON_EMOJI"),
incoming_webhook_url=Sys.getenv("SLACK_INCOMING_URL_PREFIX")) {
if (incoming_webhook_url == "") {
stop("No incoming webhook URL specified. Did you forget to call slackr_setup()?", call. = FALSE)
}
if (icon_emoji != "") { icon_emoji <- sprintf(', "icon_emoji": "%s"', icon_emoji) }
resp_ret <- ""
if (!missing(...)) {
# mimics capture.output
# get the arglist
args <- substitute(list(...))[-1L]
# setup in-memory sink
rval <- NULL
fil <- textConnection("rval", "w", local = TRUE)
sink(fil)
on.exit({
sink()
close(fil)
})
# where we'll need to eval expressions
pf <- parent.frame()
# how we'll eval expressions
evalVis <- function(expr) withVisible(eval(expr, pf))
# for each expression
for (i in seq_along(args)) {
expr <- args[[i]]
# do something, note all the newlines...Slack ``` needs them
tmp <- switch(mode(expr),
# if it's actually an expresison, iterate over it
expression = {
cat(sprintf("> %s\n", deparse(expr)))
lapply(expr, evalVis)
},
# if it's a call or a name, eval, printing run output as if in console
call = ,
name = {
cat(sprintf("> %s\n", deparse(expr)))
list(evalVis(expr))
},
# if pretty much anything else (i.e. a bare value) just output it
integer = ,
double = ,
complex = ,
raw = ,
logical = ,
numeric = cat(sprintf("%s\n\n", as.character(expr))),
character = cat(sprintf("%s\n\n", expr)),
stop("mode of argument not handled at present by slackr"))
for (item in tmp) if (item$visible) { print(item$value, quote = FALSE); cat("\n") }
}
on.exit()
sink()
close(fil)
# combined all of them (rval is a character vector)
output <- paste0(rval, collapse="\n")
loc <- Sys.getlocale('LC_CTYPE')
Sys.setlocale('LC_CTYPE','C')
on.exit(Sys.setlocale("LC_CTYPE", loc))
resp <- POST(url = incoming_webhook_url, encode = "form",
add_headers(`Content-Type` = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded",
Accept = "*/*"), body = URLencode(sprintf("payload={\"channel\": \"%s\", \"username\": \"%s\", \"text\": \"%s\"%s}",
channel, username, output, icon_emoji)))
warn_for_status(resp)
}
return(invisible())
}
slackr_bot1("*test* on time")