slackr - send messages to Slack

The slackr package contains functions to interact with the Slack messaging platform. When you need to share information/data from R, rather than resorting to copy/paste, emails, other services like Skype, you can use this package to send well-formatted output from R to all teammates at the same time with little effort. You can send text, R function output, images from the current graphics device and ggplots, R objects (as R data files), rendered LaTeX expressions, and uploaded files.

Installation

# CRAN version
install.packages("slackr")

# Development version
devtools::install_github("mrkaye97/slackr")

Breaking Changes

Version 2.0.0+ is updated to work with the new Slack API structure!

Setup

There are two ways of interfacing with slackr that provide significantly different functionality:

1. Creating a single-channel bot

   Using only a webhook to send messages to a channel

2. Creating a fully-functional multi-channel bot

   Creating a bot user to send messages to multiple channels, including plots, tables, files, etc. as well as deleting messages, reading the channels in a workspace, etc.

In most cases, we recommend Option 1 above. This requires the fewest permissions and is the simplest to set up, and will allow basic messaging to a specific channel.

See the vignettes for setup instructions.

Vignettes

The vignettes contain setup instructions and example usage:

• Option 1 setup: vignette('scoped-bot-setup', package = 'slackr')
• Option 2 setup: vignette('webhook-setup', package = 'slackr')
• Usage: vignette('using-slackr', package = 'slackr')

Config File Setup

The slackr_setup() function will try to read setup values from a ~/.slackr (you can change the default) configuration file, which may be easier and more secure than passing them in manually (plus, will allow you to have multiple slackr configurations for multiple Slack.com teams).

The file is in Debian Control File (DCF) format since it really doesn’t need to be JSON and R has a handy read.dcf() function since that’s what DESCRIPTION files are coded in.

Here’s the basic format for the configuration file:

bot_user_oauth_token: Your app's bot user OAuth token
channel: #general
username: slackr
incoming_webhook_url: https://hooks.slack.com/services/XXXXX/XXXXX/XXXXX
icon_emoji = 'boom'

You can also change the default emoji icon (from the one you setup at integration creation time) with icon_emoji.

Contributors

Many thanks to:

• Bob Rudis
• Jay Jacobs
• David Severski
• Quinn Weber
• Konrad Karczewski
• Ed Niles
• Rick Saporta
• Jonathan Sidi
• Matt Kaye
• Xinye Li
• Andrie de Vries

for their contributions to the package!

Known Issues

• Depending on your scopes, slackr could quietly fail (i.e. not throw an error, but also not post anything to your channel). If this happens, try explicitly adding the app you’re trying to have slackr post as to the channel you want in your Slack workspace with /invite @your_app_name or make sure you have chat:write.public enabled.