Stackbot

A bot for Slack that can search StackOverflow questions and display UNIX fortunes.

I decided to create a Slack bot that could search StackOverflow for questions because I mostly use Slack for discussing web development with my teammates. It's handy to have a StackOverflow search available in the middle of a discussion about bugs and computer errors.

I also added a UNIX fortune functionality, just to keep the project fun and entertaining. Fortune outputs sometimes sarcastic or interesting phrases on the screen. This way you won't get bored while you're debugging your code :)

This project was featured in Career Karma as one of the top projects of the month of April, 2020!

Video Presentation

Screenshots

Built With

• Ruby 2.6.5p114
• Rubocop 0.80.1
• RSpec 3.9
• Visual Studio Code 1.42.1

Live Demo

A live Demo is currently unavailable as it would require a Premium Heroku account.

Getting Started

It is possible to test Stackbot locally as well as remotely by deploying it to Heroku. You will need both a Slack and a Heroku account for this. To get a local copy up and running follow these simple example steps.

Prerequisites

Make sure you install Ruby and have the following packages installed before continuing:

$ gem install bundler rspec foreman

Setup

In order to test Stackbot you will need to create a Slack APP. Make sure you create a Classic Slack app, otherwise the bot will not work. Once you've created the app, configure it as a bot and install it to your preferred Slack workspace. Don't forget to save it's API token somewhere. You will need the token in order to test the bot.

Install

To test Stackbot locally, clone the repository, navigate to it's containing directory, and run:

$ bundle install
$ echo 'SLACK_API_TOKEN=your_token_here' > .env
$ foreman start

This should install all ruby gems, generate an .env file containing the API token from the Setup, and start a local server where Stackbot will live.

Usage

Once Stackbot is running either locally or remotely in Heroku, you can log into the Slack workspace where you installed it and invite it to your channel by typing /invite @Stackbot.

Typing @Stackbot help will display the following message:

Give me commands by typing @Stackbot command [arguments]

Here's a complete list of my available commands:

help Display this help message.
search your search terms Search StackOverflow for relevant questions
fortune Tell a fortune from the classic UNIX game fortune
hi Say "hi" to me!
about Display links to more details about me.

Example: @Stackbot search HTML api

You may try any such commands on Slack.

Run tests

Running rspec will test the previous functionalities. You will need to be connected to the internet to run the tests. Navigate the spec directory to find out how the tests are performed. Testing currently returns the following results:

SlackStackbot::Commands::Default
  lowercase
  capitalized
  with about argument

SlackStackbot::Commands::Fortune
  fortune is contained in fortune file

SlackStackbot::Commands::Help
  help

SlackRubyBot::Commands::Hi
  says hi

SlackStackbot::Commands::Search
  StackOverflow search returns some results
  StackOverflow search returns no results
  Search terms missing

SlackStackbot
  has a version

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Deployment

You may deploy Stackbot on Heroku by running the following commands in the repo directory:

$ heroku create
$ git push heroku master
$ heroku config:add SLACK_API_TOKEN=your_token_here
$ heroku ps:scale web=1
$ heroku open

This should keep Stackbot alive in your Heroku app for a while. However, if you want to keep running Stackbot for longer, you'll have to pay for a premium plan.

Author

Oscar Mier

• Github: @voscarmv
• Twitter: @voscarmv
• Linkedin: Oscar Mier

Future features and improvements

• Extend the variety of available search engines.
• Add more games other than UNIX Fortunes.
• Make the bot sentient using AI 🤖🧠

🤝 Contributing

Contributions, issues and feature requests are welcome!

Feel free to check the issues page.

Show your support

Give a ⭐️ if you like this project!

Acknowledgments

• I used the Slack Ruby Bot framework to lay the code foundation for the project.
• I used parts of the code from the stackoverflow gem to query StackOverflow questions by using the StackExchange API
• I also used parts of the code from fortune_gem to build my implementation of fortune.
• I copied the contents of the fortune files from the fortune-mod ubuntu package into my lib/fortunes file for my fortune implementation.
• I created a prototype before this project using git submodules of the aforementioned packages. I've left it in my repositories for reference.

📝 License

This project is MIT licensed.