Search Bibliocloud from within Slack
Slash-bibliocloud lets you query your Bibliocloud data from within slack using a custom slash command intergration.
Slash-bibliocloud runs on a heroku dyno that receives the slash commands from your team's slack, queries the Bibliocloud API for the relevant information, processes the results and posts them back to Slack. It is a simple ruby application using the excellent cksh_commander gem.
You'll need a Heroku account, an authorisation token for querying the Bibliocloud API, and admin access to your team's Slack.
For the manual installation you'll need git and the Heroku CLI installed.
Clone this repo and push it to a new Heroku application for yourself.
git clone https://github.com/nickbarreto/slash-bibliocloud.git
cd slash-bibliocloud
heroku create <your-app-name>
git remote add heroku
git push heroku master
You can call your app anything you want, but I think your Slack team name plus "-slash-bibliocloud" is a good option.
If you don't want to install git and muck around on the command line, you can click this handy button to deploy automatically to Heroku:
As above, you'll need to choose a name and a region for your servers.
You need to do some configuration from within Slack:
Add a new custom intergration to your team's Slack. Specifically, a slash command.
Fill in the required fields. Use something sensible for the command, such as '/bibliocloud'. The URL should point to the heroku app you just created: https://<yourappname>.herokuapp.com. Method: POST. I gave the intergration the same name and icon that we use for the Bibliocloud changes bot.
Press Add Slash Command Intergration.
Set the token from the slash command as a config var in your heroku app. You also need to set your Bibliocloud API token. Back in your terminal:
heroku config:set SLACK_TOKEN=<your_slack_token>
heroku config:set BIBLIOCLOUD_TOKEN=<your_bibliocloud_token>
You can also set these on the web without using the Heroku CLI in your terminal. Go to https://dashboard.heroku.com/apps/, click your app, then go to Settings and click "Reveal Config Vars". You'll see both those variables in there and be able to edit them.
Once those are set, you're all done!
You can now query your Bibliocloud data from within slack. Type in /bibliocloud [text to search] and you'll get back a list of books that contain the words you searched in their title, along with their ISBNs. You can then use /bibliocloud isbn [an_isbn] to get more information about one book. You can also search by publication date with /bibiliocloud date yyyy-mm-dd. Hooray!
Note: Heroku free dynos go to sleep after a certain amount of inactivity. If you make a query and you get an error, try it again in a moment after the dyno has woken up. If you want it to run 24/7, you can upgrade it to a Hobby Dyno for $7 a month.
All the commands are defined in the /commands/bibliocloud/command.rb file. If you want to add any new subcommands, you can send them as pull requests for changes to that file.