The Wayslack Machine: incrementally archive Slack messages and files using Slack's team export format
Project description
The Wayslack Machine
The Wayslack Machine: incrementally archive Slack teams and delete old files, using Slack’s “archive” export format.
Wayslack can also delete old files from Slack, freeing up storage space for users on the free tier. See the delete_old_files option.
Getting Started
Install wayslack:
$ pip install wayslack
(optional) Export your team history and unzip it: https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/201658943-Export-your-team-s-Slack-history
Get a legacy token from: https://api.slack.com/custom-integrations/legacy-tokens
Run wayslack path/to/export/directory to create an archive if one doesn’t already exist, then download all messages and files:
$ wayslack my-export/ API token for my-export/ (see https://api.slack.com/custom-integrations/legacy-tokens): xoxp-1234-abcd Processing: my-export/ Downloading https://.../image.jpg #general: 10 new messages in #general (saving to my-export/_channel-C049V24HY/2016-12-19.json) $ ls my-export/_files/ ... https%3A%2F%2F...%2Fimage.jpg
Optionally, create a configuration file so multiple teams can be archived easily:
$ cat ~/.wayslack/config.yaml --- archives: - dir: path/to/slack/first-export # path is relative to this file # Get token from: https://api.slack.com/custom-integrations/legacy-tokens token: xoxp-1234-abcd # Delete files from Slack if they're more than 60 days old (useful for # free Slack channels which have a file limit). # Files will only be deleted from Slack if: # - They exist in the archive (_files/storage/...) # - wayslack is run with --confirm-delete # Otherwise a message will be printed but files will not be deleted. delete_old_files: 60 days - dir: second-export token: xoxp-9876-wxyz $ wayslack Processing: first-export ... Processing: second-export ...
Deleting Old Files from Slack
The delete_old_files option (along with the --confirm-delete flag) can be used to delete old files from Slack, freeing up the team’s storage.
Files will only be deleted if the --confirm-delete flag is used, the files exist in the local archive, and their size matches the size reported in Slack’s API.
Note: due to a bug in Slack’s API, the file size reported by Slack’s API is sometimes incorrect. Because Wayslack will not delete files when the local size does not match the remote size, a few warnings will almost always be generated when deleting files (and, obviously, those files won’t be deleted).
Note 2: Slack appears to compress JPEGs, so this check is not applied to JPEGs. For all downloaded files, though, the etag is used to verify that the download was not corrupt (even if it isn’t identical to the file originally uploaded).
For example:
$ wayslack --confirm-delete ~/.wayslack/your-archive/
Exporting Slack Messages to SQL (PostgreSQL)
Also included in this repository (although not in the installer yet) is wayslack2sql.py, which will export a Wayslack archive to a PostgreSQL database:
$ pip install sqlalchemy ... $ createdb wayslack $ ./wayslack2sql.py postgres://localhost/wayslack ~/.wayslack/your-team
(note: wayslack2sql.py isn’t especially polished yet)
The schema is straightforward and closely matches Slack’s JSON format:
-- Channels (public, private, and IMs) CREATE TABLE ws_channel ( id VARCHAR(64) PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL, -- Slack channel ID kind VARCHAR(16), -- 'channel', 'im', or 'group' created TIMESTAMP WITHOUT TIME ZONE, creator VARCHAR(64), -- Slack creator ID members VARCHAR(64)[], name VARCHAR, purpose JSON, topic JSON, ..., -- See schema in wayslack2sql.py for all columns _original JSON, ) -- Users CREATE TABLE ws_user ( id VARCHAR(64) PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL, name VARCHAR, real_name VARCHAR, ..., -- See schema in wayslack2sql.py for all columns ) -- Files CREATE TABLE ws_file ( id VARCHAR(64) PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL, "user" VARCHAR(64), -- Slack ID title VARCHAR, name VARCHAR, size INTEGER, -- note: can be wrong sometimes mimetype VARCHAR, url_private VARCHAR, url_private_download VARCHAR, ..., -- See schema in wayslack2sql.py for all columns _wayslack_deleted BOOLEAN, -- If Wayslack has deleted this file from Slack _original JSON, ) -- Messages CREATE TABLE ws_msg ( id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL, -- autoincrement integer primary key ts TIMESTAMP WITHOUT TIME ZONE, "user" VARCHAR(64), type VARCHAR(16), subtype VARCHAR(32), text VARCHAR, reactions JSON, attachments JSON, ..., -- See schema in wayslack2sql.py for all columns _original JSON, )
For example, to see who sends the most messages, use:
with mc as ( select "user", sum(length(to_tsvector(text))) as word_count, count(*) as msg_count from ws_msg group by "user" ), report as ( select name, word_count, msg_count, round((word_count / msg_count::numeric), 2) as words_per_msg from mc join ws_user as u on u.id = mc."user" order by msg_count desc ) select * from report
Returns:
wayslack=# ...; name | word_count | msg_count | words_per_msg ---------------+------------+-----------+--------------- jane | 34432 | 7489 | 4.60 wolever | 22871 | 4787 | 4.78 alex | 19977 | 4346 | 4.60 smith | 12090 | 2132 | 5.67 luke | 10099 | 1852 | 5.45 ...
Hint: pg-histogram is especially useful for visualizing these data.
IMMATURITY WARNING
WARNING: wayslack is still somewhat immature and not completely tested. Right now it will archive:
Public messages
Private groups
Private messages
All uploaded files
All link previews
List of channels
List of users
Files
But it will likely be very slow for larger (100+ user or channel) teams, doesn’t have any configuration options, and likely has bugs which will only be found with time.
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