limbo 6.5.1

Simple and Clean Slack Chatbot

A Slack chatbot

Installation

1. Clone the repo
2. Create a bot user if you don’t have one yet, and copy the API Token
3. export SLACK_TOKEN=“your-api-token”
4. make run (or make repl for local testing)
5. Invite Limbo into any channels you want it in, or just message it in #general. Try typing !gif dubstep cat to test it out

kitten mittens

I recommend that you always run limbo in a virtualenv so that you are running in a clean environment.

Command Arguments

• –test, -t: Enter command line mode to enter a limbo repl.
• –hook: Specify the hook to test. (Defaults to “message”).
• -c: Run a single command.
• –database, -d: Where to store the limbo sqlite3 database. Defaults to limbo.sqlite3.
• –pluginpath, -pp: The path where limbo should look to find its plugins (defaults to /plugins).

Environment Variables

• SLACK_TOKEN: Slack API token. Required.
• LIMBO_LOGLEVEL: The logging level. Defaults to INFO.
• LIMBO_LOGFILE: File to log info to. Defaults to none.
• LIMBO_LOGFORMAT: Format for log messages. Defaults to %(asctime)s:%(levelname)s:%(name)s:%(message)s.
• LIMBO_PLUGINS: Comma-delimited string of plugins to load. Defaults to loading all plugins in the plugins directory (which defaults to “limbo/plugins”)

Note that if you are getting an error message about not seeing environment variables, you may be running limbo as sudo, which will clear the environment. Use a virtualenv and always run limbo as a user process!

Commands

It’s super easy to add your own commands! Just create a python file in the plugins directory with an on_message function that returns a string.

You can use the !help command to print out all available commands and a brief help message about them. !help <plugin> will return just the help for a particular plugin.

By default, plugins won’t react to messages from other bots (just messages from humans). Define an on_bot_message function to handle bot messages too. See the example plugins for an easy way to define these functions.

These are the current default plugins:

• calc
• emoji
• flip
• gif
• google
• help
• image
• map
• poll
• stock
• stockphoto
• weather
• wiki
• youtube

Docker

• How do I try out Limbo via docker?
  • @PeterGrace maintains a public build of limbo, available from the docker registry. Executing make docker_run will start the default bot.
  • make docker_stop will stop the bot
• When I start the docker container, I see an error about unable to source limbo.env. Is this a problem?
  • No. The limbo.env file only exists when using Kubernetes with the included opaque secret recipe for storing your environment variables.
• I’d like to develop plugins for Limbo, but would still like to use Docker to run the bot. Is there a quick way to add plugins to the bot?
  • Yes! Use the included Dockerfile.dev as a template, and simply build via make docker_build You’ll then need to start the bot with your new_image_name, for example docker run -d -e SLACK_TOKEN=<your_token> new_image_name

Contributors

• [@fsalum](https://github.com/fsalum)
• [@rodvodka](https://github.com/rodvodka)
• [@mattfora](https://github.com/mattfora)
• [@dguido](https://github.com/dguido)
• [@JoeGermuska](https://github.com/JoeGermuska)
• [@MathyV](https://github.com/MathyV)
• [@stopspazzing](https://github.com/stopspazzing)
• [@noise](https://github.com/noise)
• [@drewp](https://github.com/drewp)
• [@TetraEtc](https://github.com/TetraEtc)
• [@LivingInSyn](https://github.com/LivingInSyn)
• [@reversegremlin](https://github.com/reversegremlin)
• [@adamghill](https://github.com/adamghill)
• [@PeterGrace](https://github.com/PeterGrace)
• [@SkiftCreative](https://github.com/SkiftCreative)
• [@diceone](https://github.com/diceone)
• [@rnagle](https://github.com/rnagle)
• [@topher200](https://github.com/topher200)
• [@StewPoll](https://github.com/StewPoll)
• [@eSoares](https://github.com/eSoares)
• [@sweinstein89](https://github.com/sweinstein89)