slack bot and form controls not invoking external api

Question

I'm attempting to invoke my api which is self hosted via ngrok. ngrok is working correctly because I can open the external https site in my browser and it loads up.

So, what do I have

slack form:

var request = require('request');

var RegisterMsgBuilder = function () { }

RegisterMsgBuilder.prototype.build = function (data) {
return {
    "text": "Would you like to play a game?",
    "attachments": [
        {
            "text": "Choose a game to play",
            "fallback": "You are unable to choose a game",
            "callback_id": "wopr_game",
            "color": "#3AA3E3",
            "attachment_type": "default",
            "actions": [
                {
                    "name": "game",
                    "text": "Chess",
                    "type": "button",
                    "value": "chess"
                },
                {
                    "name": "game",
                    "text": "Falken's Maze",
                    "type": "button",
                    "value": "maze"
                },
                {
                    "name": "game",
                    "text": "Thermonuclear War",
                    "style": "danger",
                    "type": "button",
                    "value": "war",
                    "confirm": {
                        "title": "Are you sure?",
                        "text": "Wouldn't you prefer a good game of chess?",
                        "ok_text": "Yes",
                        "dismiss_text": "No"
                    }
                }
            ]
        }
    ]
}
};


exports.RegisterMsgBuilder = RegisterMsgBuilder;

this produces a form in slack with 3 buttons.

I've set up interactive components with the following url: https://xyz.ngrok.io/api/values

this url points to a new asp.net webapi project. I've not changed anything in here. Its got a controller which looks like:

namespace WebApplication2.Controllers
{
public class ValuesController : ApiController
{
    // GET api/values
    public IEnumerable<string> Get()
    {
        return new string[] { "value1", "value2" };
    }

    // GET api/values/5
    public string Get(int id)
    {
        return "value";
    }

    // POST api/values
        public void Post()
        {
            int x = 66;

        }
    }
}

clicking on a button in my slack message does nothing. How come?

What is your application's "action URL" set to? And what do you expect to happen when you click the button? None of your API methods seem to actually do anything. — Matti Virkkunen
thats correct, I have a breakpoint set on the POST method. action url: b3cce8f3.ngrok.io/api/values does the webapi need to authenticate? — John

Darren Harkness Darren Harkness · Accepted Answer · 2018-05-14T20:54:38

Primarily, you haven't given any kind of response for the API to act on. All your controller seems to do on receiving a POST is set x equal to 66.

When someone clicks that button in-channel, a POST request will be made to your action URL. It'll contain some information about the button clicked, the original message, etc (https://api.slack.com/interactive-messages#responding). You don't seem to be pulling the values from the POST your app receives at all - you'll definitely need to do that.

slack bot and form controls not invoking external api

1 Answers