slack-term-c

Archived - I never got very far with this project, and I have no intention of maintaining it. Code is here for interest's sake only.

Terminal slack client, inspired by slack-term but written in C and sqlite because... why not?

Build and Run

Works on linux, YMMV on any other platform.

Dependencies: tcc, libc, sqlite3. Install these through whatever package manager you use.

Just execute the bash script.

./run.sh

You can probably build and run in separate steps with gcc if you don't want to install tcc.

User guide

Get a slack token via the method described in slack-term

Put it in an environment variable SLACK_TOKEN before you execute run.sh

slack-term-c uses modes similar to vi, which change what the keyboard does. The current mode is displayed at the bottom of the screen.

Keyboard controls in normal mode:

q - quit
i - enter 'insert mode'
/ - enter 'search mode'
s - select next channel down
w - select next channel up

Keyboard controls in insert mode:

type to compose your message
esc - return to normal mode
enter - send a message

Keyboard controls in search mode: search mode is not yet functional

type to enter search query
esc - return to normal mode

Architecture

Sqlite3 manages all the heavy lifting. Basic principals:

all data and most application state is stored in sqlite.
main loop polls network then user interface, executing any callbacks, which will typically insert or update data in sqlite.
an update hook collects updates to a linked list in memory.
functions can be registered to react to changes in the database
on each main loop iteration where anything changed in the database, the UI is updated.

The reason for the update queue is that the sqlite update hook can't modify the database at all, so we have to defer executing any code which might do that.

Reactions can be anything, for example trigging an http call to fetch conversation history, or triggering a websocket message to send a message.

This queue approach allows decoupling, allowing complex behaviour while keeping individual functions very simple.

Data structure

Data from slack is stored in tables closely following the API documentation.

Singleton data, like the currently selected conversation index, is stored in a table of key-value pairs.

TODO

This project is missing a lot of features to make it actually useful.

Direct Messages
Message scrollback
Loading indicator
Search
custom emoji / images
attachments
mouse control
@user
threading
attachment preview
desktop notification
unread indicator

Attribution

This project draws from a few other open source projects. Some code is vendored where that approach is recommended by the authors.

termbox is used for terminal user interface.
mongoose is used for networking.
sqlite3 is used for data storage.
simclist is used for linked-list implementation.