Develop Reference

(Slack API Bolt project) Using Context object to pass property from one method to another

I am building a Slack app using the JavaScript Bolt framework. The concept of the app is just listening to specific message keywords in channels and then forwarding those messages to the users of the app.
What I am trying to achieve is including a permalink in the forwarded message. I am trying to use the chat.getPermalink method to get the url and then include that in my chat.postMessage method. I am trying to leverage Bolt's 'Context' in order to pass the property in chat.getPermalink to chat.postMessage. I am asking for help here because I cannot get the Context to work..
const app = new App({
token: process.env.SLACK_BOT_TOKEN,
signingSecret: process.env.SLACK_SIGNING_SECRET
});
let token = process.env.SLACK_BOT_TOKEN,
web = new WebClient(token);
let jira_text = "jira";
let rdu_qa = '#rdu_qa';
//Get permalink
async function PermaLinks({payload, context, next}) {
let perm = app.client.chat.getPermalink({
token: context.botToken,
channel: "C0109KMQCFQ",
message_ts: payload.ts
});
context.permalink = perm.permalink;
await next();
}
app.event('message', PermaLinks, async ({ payload, message, context}) => {
let userzArray = ["D010Q34TQL9", "UVBBD8989"];
//if channel is general and incldues the text 'Jira' or 'rdu_qa'
if (payload.channel === "C0109KMQCFQ") {
if (payload.text.includes(jira_text) || payload.text.includes(rdu_qa)) {
try {
// Call the chat.postMessage to each of the users
let oneUser = await userzArray.forEach(userId => { app.client.chat.postMessage({
token: context.botToken,
bot_id: "USLACKBOT",
channel: userId,
blocks: [
{
type: "section",
text: {
text: payload.text,
type: "mrkdwn"
},
fields: [
{
type: "mrkdwn",
text: `posted by <#${message.user}>`
},
{
type:"mrkdwn",
text: "in General channel" //channel.name//getChannelNameGeneral
},
{
type:"mrkdwn",
text: context.permalink // Permalink should be right here
}
]
},
{
"type": "divider"
},
] // End of block of Jira notification stuff
});
});
// console.log(result);
} catch (error) {
console.error(error);
}
} // If text sent to General channel includes keyword 'Jira' or 'rdu_qa'
} //end of if message was posted in General channel

There are a couple problems I can see in the example code, but I think the main issue regarding the context is that you're storing a Promise as context.permalink, not the actual result of the method call. In order to store the result, you should use the await keyword before calling the method (app.client.chat.getPermalink(...)).
I've revised the code you shared here, and I'll explain the modifications below.
const { App } = require('#slack/bolt');
const token = process.env.SLACK_BOT_TOKEN
const app = new App({
signingSecret: process.env.SLACK_SIGNING_SECRET,
token,
});
// Users who should be notified when certain messages are heard
let userzArray = ["D010Q34TQL9", "UVBBD8989"];
// Conversation IDs corresponding to the users in the array above. This variable will be set automatically when the app starts.
let conversationsToNotify;
// Match messages that include the text 'jira' or '#rdu_qa'
app.message(/jira|#rdu_qa/, async ({ message, client }) => {
// Match the messages that are in the specified channel
if (message.channel === 'C0109KMQCFQ') {
try {
// Get a permalink to this message
const permalinkResult = await client.chat.getPermalink({
channel: message.channel,
message_ts: message.ts,
});
// Send a message to each user containing the permalink for this message
await Promise.all(conversationsToNotify.map((conversationId) => {
return client.chat.postMessage({
channel: conversationId,
blocks: [
{
type: 'section',
text: {
type: 'mrkdwn',
text: `>>> ${payload.text}`,
},
fields: [
{
type: 'mrkdwn',
text: `posted by <#${message.user}>`,
},
{
type: 'mrkdwn',
text: `in <#${message.channel}>`,
},
{
type:'mrkdwn',
text: `<Original|${permalinkResult.permalink}>`,
},
],
},
{
type: 'divider'
},
],
});
}));
} catch (error) {
console.error(error);
}
}
});
async function convertUsersToConversations(input) {
return Promise.all(input.map((id) => {
// For all IDs that seem like user IDs, convert them to a DM conversation ID
if (id.startsWith('U')) {
return app.client.conversations.open({
token,
users: id,
})
.then((result) => result.channel.id);
}
// For all IDs that don't seem to belong to a user, return them as is
return id;
}));
});
(async () => {
// Start the app
conversationsToNotify = await convertUsersToConversations(userzArray);
await app.start(process.env.PORT || 3000);
console.log('⚡️ Bolt app is running!');
})();
I've removed the initialization of a new WebClient object. In Bolt v1.6.0 and later, there is a client argument available in listeners and middleware which you can use to call Web API methods instead. The advantage of using the client argument is that you don't need to read the token from the context and pass it as an argument for each method call on your own, Bolt will find the right token for you.
Instead of using the app.event('message', ...) method to listen for message events, I've changed to using app.message(...). The latter works mostly the same, but has one more advantage: you can pass a pattern to match the text of a message as the first argument (before the listener function): app.message(pattern, ...). That helps remove some of the conditions inside the listener. Instead of using just the two string variables jira_text and #rdu_qa, I've combined them in a single regular expression that matches when either of those values is seen in the text: /jira|#rdu_qa/.
Instead of using middleware to find the permalink of a message, I've moved that code into the listener. Middleware should be used to reuse code across multiple listeners (or global middleware to reuse code across all listeners). In your example, it doesn't seem like the code to find the permalink is being reused, but if you do use this in many listeners, it should be relatively easy to extract. Another advantage is now the logic only runs after the pattern was matched, so you're not making these calls for every single message that the bot sees in all channels that it is a member of (this is much better for performance).
Use Promise.all() to collect the Promises of each call to chat.postMessage into one promise. Currently, you're using userzArray.forEach(...), which doesn't return anything. So then using await on that value will immediately resolve, and doesn't really do anything useful. What we need to do is collect each of the Promises and wait for them to all complete. This is what Promise.all() does. We just need an array of Promises to pass in, which we can get by simply changing userzArray.forEach() to userzArray.map().
There's a problem with the way you're calling chat.postMessage. You're trying to use Slackbot to send those messages, but that's not recommended because users are less likely to understand where that message is coming from. Instead, you should send this message as a DM from your bot user. In order to do that, you need a conversation ID, not a user ID, for each user you want to send this notification to. One of the items in userzArray is already a DM conversation ID (it starts with a D), but the other is not. In order to make this work consistently, I've created the conversationsToNotify array which contains the conversation IDs for each user after calling conversations.open to create a DM. Now in the code, you'll see conversationsToNotify.map() instead of userzArray.map(). Your Slack app will now need the im:write and chat:write permission scopes (don't forget to reinstall once you add scopes). Looking up the conversation IDs will slow down your app from starting up if the number of users in the array gets larger. My recommendation would be to save the conversation IDs in your code (or in a database) instead of the user IDs. This will ensure a consistently fast start up time for your app.
There's an opportunity to do even better. What happens when the first call to chat.postMessage fails? The way I've written the code above, the error would be logged to the console, but later if the second call fails, there's no way to know. That's because Promise.all() returns a promise that will reject as soon as any one of the promises rejects, and then ignores what happens afterwards. If you're using Node v12.9.0 or greater, I would recommend using Promise.allSettled() instead (which would require a few changes in your catch clause as well).
General cleanup:
Use message argument in the listener everywhere instead of payload argument. These are actually the same value when dealing with message events. payload is mostly only useful in middleware that handle several kinds of events (action, event, view, shortcut, etc) so that there's one way to refer to all of their payloads.
Move userzArray outside the listener, and make it a constant. There's no point in redeclaring it inside the listener each time it runs, and it doesn't change.
I added a function to convert from user IDs to conversation IDs (convertUsersToConversations). This function is called before the app is started to avoid a race condition where the an incoming message is handled before the app knows which channels to notify.
Formatted the text content of the message as quoted text, formatted the channel mention, and formatted the permalink. One improvement I'd also recommend is to use a context block to show the message author's name and avatar image.

delete incoming write event after calculations in firebase functions

I have an app that uses firebase, the whole stack pretty much, functions, database, storage, auth, messaging, the whole 9. I want to keep the client end very lightweight. So if a user comments on a post and "tags" another user, let's say using the typical "#username" style tagging, I moved all of the heavy lifting to the firebase functions. That way the client doesn't have to figure out the user ID based on the username, and do everything else. It is setup using triggers, so when the above scenario happens I write to a "table" called "create_notifications" with some data like
{
type: "comment",
post_id: postID,
from: user.getUid(),
comment_id: newCommentKey,
to: taggedUser
}
Where the taggedUser is the username, the postID is the active post, the newCommentKey is retrieved from .push() on the comments db reference, and the user.getUid() is from the firebase auth class.
Now in my firebase functions I have a "onWrite" trigger for that specific table that gets all of the relevant information and sends out a notification to the poster of the post with all the relevant details. All of that is complete, what I am trying to figure out is... how do I delete the incoming event, that way I don't need any sort of cron jobs to clear out this table. I can just grab the event, do my needed calculations and data gathering, send the message, then delete the incoming event so it never even really exists in the database except for the small amount of time it took to gather the data.
A simplified sample of the firebase functions trigger is...
exports.createNotification = functions.database.ref("/create_notifications/{notification_id}").onWrite(event => {
const from = event.data.val().from;
const toName = event.data.val().to;
const notificationType = event.data.val().type;
const post_id = event.data.val().post_id;
var comment_id, commentReference;
if(notificationType == "comment") {
comment_id = event.data.val().comment_id;
}
const toUser = admin.database().ref(`users`).orderByChild("username").equalTo(toName).once('value');
const fromUser = admin.database().ref(`/users/${from}`).once('value');
const referencePost = admin.database().ref(`posts/${post_id}`).once('value');
return Promise.all([toUser, fromUser, referencePost]).then(results => {
const toUserRef = results[0];
const fromUserRef = results[1];
const postRef = results[2];
var newNotification = {
type: notificationType,
post_id: post_id,
from: from,
sent: false,
create_on: Date.now()
}
if(notificationType == "comment") {
newNotification.comment_id = comment_id;
}
return admin.database().ref(`/user_notifications/${toUserRef.key}`).push().set(newNotification).then(() => {
//NEED TO DELETE THE INCOMING "event" HERE TO KEEP DB CLEAN
});
})
}
So in that function in the final "return" of it, after it writes the finalized data to the "/user_notifications" table, I need to delete the event that started the whole thing. Does anyone know how to do that? Thank you.

First off, use .onCreate instead of .onWrite. You only need to read each child when they are first written, so this will avoid undesirable side effects. See the documentation here for more information on the available triggers.
event.data.ref() holds the reference where the event occurred. You can call remove() on the reference to delete it:
return event.data.ref().remove()

The simplest way to achieve this is through calling the remove() function offered by the admin sdk,
you could get the reference to the notification_id through the event, i.e event.params.notification_id then remove it when need be with admin.database().ref('pass in the path').remove(); and you are good to go.

For newer versions of Firebase, use:
return change.after.ref.remove()

PouchDB code won't work without adding attachment

I'm building an app to store information items. Currently there are 3 input fields (Title, description and fileinput).
When I fill in all three fields and call the addItem() function, it works. But when I leave the input field empty, the function doesn't add it to the database.
Is there a way to tell that the file input field is not required?
My javascript code:
function addItem() {
//get file
var inputFile = document.querySelector('#inputFile');
var getFile = inputFile.files[0];
//get info
var title = document.getElementById('itemTitle').value;
var desc = document.getElementById('itemDesc').value;
//add
locallp.put({
_id: new Date().toISOString(),
title: title,
description: desc,
_attachments: {
"file": {
content_type: getFile.type,
data: getFile
}
}
}).then(function(){
console.log("Added to the database");
location.href = "menu.html";
}).catch(function(err){
console.log(err);
});
}
some extra info, I'm using Cordova to build the app. My database is PouchDB and connected via couchperuser to a CouchDB server.

I'd be surprised that your second line (inputFile.files[0]) even works if you don't provide a file. In any case, I'm sure the getFile.type method call will fail if there's no file.
You need some logic in this method so that it does two different things based on whether there's a file supplied or not. If there is one then it does what you have, if there isn't then it doesn't try adding the _attachments and probably skips the whole setting of getFile too.

Parse: remove user and its related records

I have Parse table with entities.
User - default class
Commets - class with pointer to _User entity.
I need to delete user from entity User together with all its comments, located in Comments entity:
Right now I have JS Cloud code:
Parse.Cloud.define("deleteUser", function(request, response) {
var User = Parse.Object.extend("User");
var query = new Parse.Query(User);
var userID = request.params.userID;
query.get(userID,{
success: function(User) {
var message = 'success';
User.destroy({
useMasterKey: true ,
success:function() {
response.success(message);
return;
},
error:function(error) {
response.error('Could not delete object '+ User.id);
return;
}
});
},
error: function(object, error) {
var message = 'User could not found';
response.error(message);
}
});
});
It's removing user only.
How I can combine to remove also records from other entity by user?
Thanks for advance

As eth3lbert pointed out in the comments, you should use an afterDelete hook that gets called after the User object has been deleted. You can kick off any other delete operations you want.
However, there is a little gotcha, the before* and after* methods get killed after 3 seconds of wall clock time which might lead to unwanted results depending on the amount of data that you need to delete.
The best solution for you is to setup a background job (they can run for up to 15 minutes), schedule it to run, lets say once every day, and do any cleanup work in that job.
You could create a simple table for that, that contains the objectIds of deleted users, whenever your afterDelete method gets called, you add the deleted users id into that table, your background job then queries that table on run and deletes the content that was associated with it.

You can delete user easily from user request as below.
Parse.Cloud.define('deleteUser', async (req) => {
const user = req.user;
return user.destroy({ useMasterKey: true});
})
and add additional deleting logic related to User.

Add a new field to a document mongodb

I am very new to mongodb and have a basic question that I am having trouble with. How do I get the ID field of a document that has already been created? I need the ID so i can update/add a new field to the document.
//newProfile is an object, one string it holds is called school
if(Schools.find({name: newProfile.school}).fetch().length != 1){
var school = {
name: newProfile.school
}
Meteor.call('newSchool', school);
//Method 1 (doesn't work)
var schoolDoc = Schools.findOne({name: newProfile.school});
Schools.update({_id: schoolDoc._id}, {$set: {enrolledStudents: Meteor.user()}});
//Method 2?
//Schools.update(_id: <what goes here?>, {$push: {enrolledStudents: Meteor.user()}});
}
else {
//Schools.update... <add users to an existing school>
}
I create a new school document if the listed school does not already exist. Schools need to hold an array/list of students (this is where i am having trouble). How do I add students to a NEW field (called enrolledStudents)?
Thanks!

I'm having some trouble understanding exactly what you're trying to do. Here's my analysis and understanding so far with a couple pointers thrown in:
if(Schools.find({name: newProfile.school}).fetch().length != 1){
this would be more efficient
if(Schools.find({name: new Profile.school}).count() != 1) {
Meteor.call('newSchool', school);
Not sure what you're doing here, unless you this will run asynchronously, meaning by the time the rest of this block of code has executed, chances are this Meteor.call() function has not completed on the server side.
//Method 1 (doesn't work)
var schoolDoc = Schools.findOne({name: newProfile.school});
Schools.update({_id: schoolDoc._id}, {$set: {enrolledStudents: Meteor.user()}});
Judging by the if statement at the top of your code, there is more than one school with this name in the database. So I'm unsure if the schoolDoc variable is the record you're after.

I believe you are having trouble because of the asynchronous nature of Meteor.call on the client.
Try doing something like this:
// include on both server and client
Meteor.methods({
newSchool: function (school) {
var newSchoolId,
currentUser = Meteor.user();
if (!currentUser) throw new Meteor.Error(403, 'Access denied');
// add some check here using the Meteor check/match function to ensure 'school'
// contains proper data
try {
school.enrolledStudents = [currentUser._id];
newSchoolId = Schools.insert(school);
return newSchoolId;
} catch (ex) {
// handle appropriately
}
}
});
// on client
var schoolExists = false;
if (Schools.findOne({name: newProfile.school})) {
schoolExists = true;
}
if (schoolExists) {
var school = {
name: newProfile.school
};
Meteor.call('newSchool', school, function (err, result) {
if (err) {
alert('An error occurred...');
} else {
// result is now the _id of the newly inserted record
}
})
} else {
}
Including the method on both the client and the server allows Meteor to do latency compensation and 'simulate' the insert immediately on the client without waiting for the server round-trip. But you could also just keep the method on the server-side.
You should do the enrolledStudents part on the server to prevent malicious users from messing with your data. Also, you probably don't want to actually be storing the entire user object in the enrolledStudents array, just the user _id.

For what you're trying to do, there is no need to get the _id. When you use update, just switch out the {_id: schoolDoc._id} with your query. Looks like using {name: newProfile.school} will work, assuming that the rest of your code does what you want it to do.
While that would work with the normal Mongo driver, I see that Meteor does not allow your update query to be anything but _id: Meteor throws throwIfSelectorIsNotId exception
First, make sure that you're pulling the right document, and you can try something like this:
var school_id = Schools.findOne({name: newProfile.school})._id;
Schools.update({_id: school_id}, { $push: { enrolledStudents: Meteor.user()}});
If that doesn't work, you'll have to do a little debugging to see what in particular about it isn't working.