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Project Archived: Slack has changed the API significantly and this doesn't work anymore.

Leaving this here just for reading purposes.

Slack CMD

A command line tool to interface slack.

Install

$ pip install slack.py

Usage

Basic Usage

All the subcommands require a Slack access token to work. You can pass the token either as a parameter:

$ slack -a <AUTH-TOKEN> auth_test

or as an environment variable:

$ SLACK_API_TOKEN=<AUTH-TOKEN> slack auth_test

Authentication in Slack is based on OAuth and might be complicated to set it up. To get started, you can generate a personal token from this page: https://api.slack.com/custom-integrations/legacy-tokens

Channels

This commands allows you to interact with Slack channels (listing, archiving or deleting them). All these subcommands accept filters like --starts-with or --contains. Deleting and Archiving allow --dry-run mode to simulate the behavior without making real changes. Be aware of Slack API Rates. See section below

See examples below.

Listing Channels

image

List channels' ids, names, archived status:

$ slack -a <AUTH-TOKEN> channels

You can filter by --starts-with:

$ slack -a <AUTH-TOKEN> channels --starts-with 'z-visitor'

And --contains:

$ slack -a <AUTH-TOKEN> channels --contains 'visitor'

Archiving and Deleting Channels

(Warning: Once a channel is deleted there's no way to restore it. Use it at your own risk)

deleting slack channels

Use your usual channels filters and pass the --archive or --delete flags to either archive or delete the matching channels. Try your action with the --dry-run flag before performing the real action to see which channels would be deleted.

$ slack -a <AUTH-TOKEN> channels --starts-with 'z-visitor' --delete --dry-run --sleep 0

The --sleep parameter is required for --archive and --delete due to Slack API Rates. See below.

Finally, a real --delete command looks like:

$ slack -a <AUTH-TOKEN> channels --starts-with 'z-visitor' --delete

Slack API Rates

Some commands like --delete channels can't be issued too frequently because the Slack API fails. That's why most commands have a --sleep parameter that will wait a given number of milliseconds before issuing new requests. You can try decreasing it by just passing --sleep to your commands. I couldn't find any official documentation for the correct time limits of some methods. I tried out and for example, deleting channels requires at least 10 seconds before every request.