pyslacker: A Python repository from delameter

A Slack bot and set of scripts for exporting history (and something more) from public channels, private channels and direct messages (DMs), using Slack's new Conversations API.

A similar service is provided by Slack for workspace admins at https://my.slack.com/services/export (where my can be replaced with your full workspace name to refer to a workspace different than your default). However, it can only access public channels, while pyslacker can retrieve data from any channel accessible to your user account.

Based on sebseager/slack-exporter

Authentication with Slack

There are two ways to use pyslacker (detailed below). Both require a Slack API token to be able to communicate with your workspace.

Visit https://api.slack.com/apps/ and sign in to your workspace.
Click Create New App, enter a name (e.g., Slack Exporter), and select your workspace.
In prior versions of the Slack API, OAuth permissions had to be specified manually. Now, when prompted for an App Manifest, just paste in the contents of the slack.yaml file in the root of this repo.
Select Install to Workspace at the top of that page (or Reinstall to Workspace if you have done this previously) and accept at the prompt.
Copy the OAuth Access Token (which will generally start with xoxp for user-level permissions)

Usage

As a script

Wrapper script dump-history.sh can create an archive of all accessible conversation history with all replies in your workspace.

Either add
```
SLACK_USER_TOKEN = xoxp-xxxxxxxxxxxxx...
```
to a file named .env in repo's root (run cp .env.dist .env if it doesn't exist) or run the following in your shell (replacing the value with the user token you obtained in the Authentication with Slack section above).
```
export SLACK_USER_TOKEN=xoxp-xxxxxxxxxxxxx...
```
Run ./warmup-cache.sh. This script will download and cache channels and users from your workspace (this step is optional, but recommended).
Type all channels you want to save as comma-separated list and run: ./dump-history.sh channel1,channel2;
... or run ./dump-history-from-json.sh which will use channel.json in repo's root as a source of channels to export (run cp channel.dist.json channel.json if file doesn't exist and add channels to copied file). If you skipped step 2, channel/user lists will be downloaded before actual export starts, but this needs to be done only once.

Tips

dump-emoji.sh can be used to download all emojis defined in a workspace (but as for now it requires some additional manual work).
To interact with history export script directly, use: venv/bin/python -m pyslacker --help (this will list available options).

As a Slack bot

pyslacker/bot.py is a Slack bot that responds to "slash commands" in Slack channels (e.g., /export-channel). To connect the bot to the Slack app generated in Authentication with Slack, add the following line to a file named .env in repo's root (run cp .env.dist .env if it doesn't exist) :

SLACK_USER_TOKEN = xoxp-xxxxxxxxxxxxx...

After that run the Flask app such that the application is exposed to the Internet. This can be done via a web server (e.g., Heroku), as well as via the ngrok service, which assigns your localhost server a public URL.

To use the ngrok method:

Download the appropriate binary.
Run ./start-bot.sh
Run the ngrok binary with path/to/ngrok http 5000, where 5000 is the port on which the Flask application (step 2) is running. Copy the forwarding HTTPS address provided.

Create the following slash commands will be created (one for each applicable Flask route):

Command	Request URL	Arguments	Example Usage
/export-channel	https://`[host_url]`/slack/export-channel	json \| text	/export-channel text
/export-replies	https://`[host_url]`/slack/export-replies	json \| text	/export-replies json

To do this, clone slack.dist.yaml as slack.yaml, uncomment the slash-commands section in slack.yaml and replace YOUR_HOST_URL_HERE with something like https://xxxxxxxxxxxx.ngrok.io (if using ngrok). Then navigate back to OAuth & Permissions and click (Re)install to Workspace to add these slash commands to the workspace (ensure the OAuth token in your .env file is still correct).

Screenshots

Example of channel history export completed in 186 requests (all thumbnails are clickable):

Running wrapper script with two channels specified:

Running preparation script warmup-cache.sh which downloads full channel list and full user list. This is optional, because these lists will be loaded anyway before actual export starts; but in that case this will be done within export command, which might be confusing.

Contributors

Seb Seager (original scripts)
Aleksandr Shavykin (refactoring, detailed output, more exporters)
Mikhail Shipov (enchancements, fixes)

License

This software is available under the GPL.

delameter/pyslacker