/slackbox

🎵 Spotify playlist collaboration through Slack.

Primary LanguageJavaScript

slackbox

Checkout the readme at the original version from the guys at Benchmark for better installation info.

Deploy

Simply create a Slash Command, such as /playlist, which accepts a command, and a track and artist name, in the form

/playlist command - artist - song
i.e.
/playlist add - hazel english - make it better

Sample Use

Adding a song:

Sample use

Removing a song:

Sample use

Common

During setup, have your slash command or outgoing webhook submit a POST to your app's /store endpoint, e.g. https://app-name.herokuapp.com/store.

Make a note of the token (either from the slash command or outgoing webhook), as you'll need it later to help guard against cross-site request forgery.

Spotify

Head over to Spotify's Developer Site and create a new Application. Make sure you add whatever slackbox's callback URI as a valid callback URI. If you're running locally, this will be http://localhost:3000/callback or on Heroku https://app-name.herokuapp.com/callback

Make a note of the key, secret and callback URI too, as you'll need these later as well.

Also, don't forget to make a playlist. If you do this through Spotify's web interface then the playlist identifier will be the last segment of the URI - make a note of this too! If there's a better way of finding this out, we're all ears. If you do this through the app, right-click the playlist to get it's web URL and again, you need the last segment of the URI.

Environment variables

Once you've cloned slackbox or hit the "Deploy with Heroku" button you'll need to setup the following environment variables. These can either be stored in a .env or set up as config variables in Heroku.

  • SLACK_TOKEN - The token from Slack's Slash Command.
  • SPOTIFY_KEY - Your Spotify application key (a.k.a Client ID).
  • SPOTIFY_SECRET - Your Spotify application secret (a.k.a Client Secret).
  • SPOTIFY_USERNAME - Your Spotify username.
  • SPOTIFY_PLAYLIST_ID - Your playlist identifier.
  • SPOTIFY_REDIRECT_URI - URI to redirect to once your user has allowed the application's permissions.
  • PORT - Changing port if required
  • PLAYLIST_NAME - to update the name of the playlist - [need to update to pull from the ID]

Intended improvements

Looking to extend the functionality:

  • convert to a BOT instead of a slash command!
  • parse songs via URLs / URIs from spotify, bandcamp, soundcloud etc and present interactive buttons to add to playlist
  • option for BOT to create playlists and then update the current collaborative playlist, or overwrite which playlist is being written to
  • improve authorisation UI
  • use BOT as a jukebox, i.e. play - track will control the logged in account