.. - ... / .... .- -.-. -.- / -.. .- -.-- / .- - / -.- --- --. .- -. -.-.--
The above elegant line of dits and dahs is Morse code. Developed in the 1800s, it has stood the test of time, and with its combination of nostalgia, intrigue and retro vibe, it’s primed for a resurgence in popularity. Instant messengers can feel a bit synthetic and for those who long for a more analog, authentic communication, Morse code may well meet this need. As part of our regular hack days at Kogan.com, and with the intention of improving Slack by adding personalised features, a Morse code bot was just one of a plethora of bots that was created on the day.
So how did we achieve this greatness?
It started with a repurposed Google Cloud project and a quickly assembled Flask app to lay the solid foundations on which to build. Because we care about developer experience, we added UAT builds on push to our dev branch, and because we care about consistency, we set up some pre-commit checks. Once that was done, it was time to start with the meat and potatoes, and get some functionality working. After examining Slack documentation we knew vaguely what we needed. That was to create a custom Slack app bot and use slash commands to access our Flask app. Essentially, one can access a Slack app bot by typing “/bot-name” into the message box and whatever message you write after this is sent as a parameter to the request url specified. The response from this request is then posted in the channel from which it was sent. We could now start work on the individual bots.
The Morse Man bot:
Our progress so far had worked well, but we soon stumbled upon a constraint that was rendering the Morse bot worthless. The problem is as follows, should you wish to utilise the Morse bot to encode a message, the bot replies to the channel with both of the following messages:
Morse Man Slack bot posts:
@userTryingToBeSecret sent this message: /morse Here is my super secret message
Morse Man Slack bot posts: .... . .-. . / .. ... / -- -.-- / ... ..- .--. . .-. / ... . -.-. .-. . - / -- . ... ... .- --. .
No point sending a secret message if you send the real message with it at the same time. Concerned that this could affect uptake and not wanting to jeopardize the project, a better technical solution would be necessary. Further investigation found there is an option to set the bot response to only be visible to the sender, and it was also found the Slack API can be used to send messages ad hoc. Combining these 2 possibilities we are now able to do the following:
- Use a slash command to call the bot
- Send a request to the Flask app (and return no response)
- The Flask app receives the message as a parameter, and using sophisticated algorithms encodes it into Morse. At the same time we get the channel ID from the request API
- Using the separate Slack web API, make a request to the channel and send the message!
Lastly, our Slack bot could only be taken seriously if it has a legitimate avatar, and hence our UI/UX designer got involved to add a polished feel to the project. The end result can be witnessed below.
The Horse Man bot:
Following on from the development and good learnings of the Morse Man bot, but instead of converting into Morse code, it uses an alternative proprietary encryption method to convert into horse dialect. Also complete with its own avatar.
Impersonator bot:
A skunk works project that was developed in the shadows. Someone noticed that you could supply any name and icon with the API request, and this essentially meant you would be able to impersonate any user on Slack(this is true apart from the small word ‘app’ after the username indicating its true source) By using the Slack API that returns user details, the bot can accept a username and a message, then automatically retrieve the users Icon and repost the message as that user. A dangerous discovery that was essentially banned immediately.
Humor bot:
Using the same foundations, but then uses external APIs to fetch jokes from Chuck Norris and Ron Swanson to inject some humor where required.
Dashboard bot:
A truly value adding bot. The idea was for a bot to provide snapshots of our Grafana dashboards when requested on slack. This could provide quick access for everyone and also add value if needed as part of a discussion. It leverages Selenium to login and render the dashboard, as well as take a screenshot, which is then returned with the Slack web API.
Unmorse bot:
Decodes Morse code. This has proven to be particularly useful, as it turns out not many people can read Morse code directly.
We now have a bunch of nifty bots at our disposal and a better understanding of the functionality available for integrating with Slack. At Kogan.com, hack days are considered an important tool in giving us the time to pursue alternative projects of our own choice. The skills and ideas seeded from a hack day can result in something that adds direct benefit or can be an opportunity to learn and upskill ourselves. It also adds to the culture of our workplace and supports team work by giving us the chance to work with people outside our normal team.