Austin Elixir: Slack Bots With Hedwig
- 2. Self Promotion • Erik DeBill • @edebill and @parsenome on twitter • https://github.com/edebill
- 3. Spredfast Pays Me • https://www.spredfast.com/ • We’ve got lots of really interesting problems and a truly polyglot architecture
- 4. Hedwig Slack • Plugin for hedwig-im • You need to use the github/master version instead of published hex.pm • Maintainer answers questions in #hedwig channel on Elixir slack • Documentation is fairly good for the basics • See Elixir Sips episodes
- 5. Bootstrapping • follow steps on Hedwig_slack README • mix new myapp —sup • cd myapp • add hedwig_slack to deps • mix deps.get • mix deps.compile
- 6. Robot Generator • Works about like you’d expect • Prompts you to add a worker to your supervision tree. If you didn’t add the —sup option when you ran mix new this will be hard to figure out
- 7. Config.exs • Last of the boilerplate • Follow README on how to add to config.exs • I recommend 2 tokens - one dev, one test (rate limits will eat you) • Responders are where the interesting stuff live
- 9. Responders • modules that use Hedwig.Responder • ‘hear’ and ‘respond’ macros • chime in vs answer question • can regex capture
- 10. At this point, we’ve covered all the basics from the docs
- 11. after_connect • Called after connection established • Use to register bot so outside code can find it
- 12. Sending Without Responders • Figure out pid for your bot • Figure out channel id (IO.inspect inside a responder works great - these remain stable forever) • Format a Hedwig.Message with room, text, and type
- 13. Suggestions • “hear” responders will respond to ANYTHING that matches - including help message output and things the bot says in a channel • Generally stick to “respond” style responders • Keep real app logic outside responders • Consider starting with your bot inside an umbrella app • Hedwig_slack locks a version of cowlib that conflicts with phoenix. Can’t run them inside same app. • Get 2 tokens (1 prod, 1 dev) • Make a dedicated channel for bot testing