# Coding a personal assistant on Slack

A while back Google remove the option to use their email adresses on low security settings. Which I was using with one of my dummy emails as a way to send me emails when a remote job is done.

I thought about looking for an alternative and wondered how difficult it would be to transfer this messaging task to a Slack Bot.

Turns out it's not that difficult:

1. Install the Slack Developer Kit for Python:
a. Open a terminal window and run the command:
`pip install slack-sdk`.

2. Get the bot token:
a. In the Slack API dashboard, go to the "Install App" section.
b. Click "Install App to Workspace" and follow the prompts.
c. Allow Bot token. I used the followin ones:`channels:join`, `channels:read` and `channels:write`

d. Copy the "Bot User OAuth Access Token" - this will be used to authenticate your bot.

3. Bot code

- Auth
Set the bot token as environment variable

export SLACK_BOT_TOKEN="THE_TOKEN"

- To join a channel:

import os
from slack_sdk import WebClient
from slack_sdk.errors import SlackApiError
client = WebClient(token=os.environ['SLACK_BOT_TOKEN'])
channel_id = 'YOUR_CHANNEL_ID'
try:
    response = client.conversations_join(channel=channel_id)
    print("Bot has joined the channel: ", response['channel']['name'])
except SlackApiError as e:
    print("Error joining channel: {}".format(e))

try:
    response = client.chat_postMessage(
        channel=channel_id,
        text="Hello, World! I am Wilfred your personal assistant."
    )
    print("Message sent: ", response['message']['text'])
except SlackApiError as e:
    print("Error sending message: {}".format(e))

- To post a message

This code when used as `python wilfred_message.py "My message"` wil post "My message' in the channel joined above.

import os
import sys
from slack_sdk import WebClient
from slack_sdk.errors import SlackApiError
client = WebClient(token=os.environ['SLACK_BOT_TOKEN'])
channel_id = 'CU6LRKTPT'
message = " ".join(sys.argv[1:])
try:
    response = client.chat_postMessage(
        channel=channel_id,
        text=message
    )
    print("Message sent: ", response['message']['text'])
except SlackApiError as e:
    print("Error sending message: {}".format(e))

And voila!


###### tags: `Bot`, `Slack`, `API`, `Python`