Build a Slackbot with Node.js to Monitor your Applications

• superagent

  16 16,539 4.7 JavaScript

  Ajax for Node.js and browsers (JS HTTP client). Maintained for @forwardemail, @ladjs, @spamscanner, @breejs, @cabinjs, and @lassjs.

  

Now let's add the code to call Slack on startup, and write a message to our channel. We can modify our boilerplate code above to make the HTTP POST to the endpoint https://slack.com/api/chat.postMessage. We'll use Superagent to make the call.

• body-parser

  7 5,381 0.0 JavaScript

  Node.js body parsing middleware

  

Now that our app can send us messages, can we send messages back to it? Let's implement the slash command, which will allow us to ask our app for some of its important stats and info. This time, Slack will send an HTTP POST to our app. If we take a look at the Slack docs again, we notice that Slack will send the slash command instruction to the URL we specified in the command set up earlier. We can also see that the POST payload is in the format application/x-www-form-urlencoded. We can set up a body-parser to interpret this data.

• SurveyJS

  surveyjs.io sponsored

  Open-Source JSON Form Builder to Create Dynamic Forms Right in Your App. With SurveyJS form UI libraries, you can build and style forms in a fully-integrated drag & drop form builder, render them in your JS app, and store form submission data in any backend, inc. PHP, ASP.NET Core, and Node.js.

  

• postman-app-support

  279 5,741 2.3

  Postman is an API platform for building and using APIs. Postman simplifies each step of the API lifecycle and streamlines collaboration so you can create better APIs—faster.

  

We can ask our app via Slack (which we use constantly!) how it's doing; pretty cool, huh? There is a problem though. If we call our slash command endpoint from anywhere else, for instance if we just call it using Postman, it also returns all the information and stats! This would not be good for a production system, as sensitive information will be easily found by attackers.

• Express

  674 63,771 8.3 JavaScript

  Fast, unopinionated, minimalist web framework for node.

  

Express: This acts as our web server and HTTP request router. We'll use this to route requests from Slack to the correct logic.

• Visual Studio Code

  2,840 158,095 10.0 TypeScript

  Visual Studio Code

  

An IDE or text editor to create the project in. This tutorial was made using Visual Studio Code, but feel free to use any tool you like.

• InfluxDB

  www.influxdata.com sponsored

  Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale. Get real-time insights from all types of time series data with InfluxDB. Ingest, query, and analyze billions of data points in real-time with unbounded cardinality.

  

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