Rock The Slackbot Plugin

What is Slack?

Slack is a team collaboration tool that offers chat rooms organized by topic, as well as private groups and direct messaging. It’s a great way to be productive with your team without clogging up your inbox.

What is A Slackbot?

Slackbot is Slack’s built-in robot, which helps us send messages to you and your team inside your Slack account.

Why Rock The Slackbot?

Because it can help you manage your websites, and stay on top of changes, by sending notifications (following numerous WordPress events) to your Slackbot who will pass them along to a channel or direct message in your Slack account.

Rock the Slackbot is multisite-friendly.

Rock the Slackbot sends customizable notifications for the following events:

• When a post is published
• When a post is unpublished
• When a post is updated
• When a post is deleted
• When a post is trashed
• When a comment is added
• When a comment is approved
• When a comment is unapproved
• When a comment is marked as spam
• When a comment is trashed
• When a 404 error is thrown
• When a menu item is deleted
• When media is added
• When media is edited
• When media is deleted
• When a user is added
• When a user is deleted
• When a user’s role is changed
• When a plugin, theme, or core update is available
• When a plugin, theme, or core is updated

I’m working to add the following events:

• When menu item is added
• When plugins or themes are uploaded
• When plugins or themes are activated

Each event can be customized to allow you to send different event notifications to different Slack channels, e.g. you can send core, theme and plugin updates to your “wp-development” channel while all of your post changes go to your “wp-content” channel.

Please use the Issues section of this plugin’s GitHub repo to suggest features, like other notification events.

A Slack account is required to use this plugin and is free to use for as long as you want and with an unlimited number of people. Visit the Slack website to learn more and sign up.

Send A Simple Slack Message

You can use the following send_webhook_message() function to send a simple message to your Slack account.

The function accepts the following parameters:

1. $webhook_id_or_url – provide the webhook URL or the ID of one stored in settings
2. $message – the message you want to send

3. $channel – OPTIONAL – the channel you want to send message to. Prefix with # for a specific channel or @ for a specific user. Will use default channel if nothing is passed.

   // Use this function to send a simple message to Slack
   rock_the_slackbot()->send_webhook_message( ‘564d3c1cdf52d’, ‘this is a test’, ‘#testchannel’ );

   Filters

   Rock The Slackbot has filters setup to allow you to tweak each WordPress notification before it’s sent. You can setup a filter for all notifications or drill down by event or specific webhook.

Each notification filter passes three arguments:

1. $notification – an array containing the notification information: webhook URL (the URL for your Slack account) and the payload (all of the information being sent to Slack) for the notification
2. $notification_event – the slug of the notification event
   • Will be false if you send a custom Slack notification that doesn’t involve a WordPress event
3. $event_args – an array containing notification event specific information
   • Will be false if you send a custom Slack notification that doesn’t involve a WordPress event

See Notification Events below to learn which information is passed to the filters for each notification event.

Filter all WordPress notifications

add_filter( 'rock_the_slackbot_notification', 'filter_rock_the_slackbot_notification', 10, 3 ); function filter_rock_the_slackbot_notification( $notification, $notification_event, $event_args ) { // Change the pieces // Return the notification return $notification; } 

Filter WordPress notifications by webhook ID

// You can find the ID for each of your webhooks on their edit screen in the admin add_filter( 'rock_the_slackbot_notification_(webhook_id)', 'filter_rock_the_slackbot_notification_webhook', 10, 3 ); function filter_rock_the_slackbot_notification_webhook( $notification, $notification_event, $event_args ) { // Change the pieces // Return the notification return $notification; } 

Filter WordPress notifications by event slug

// The event slugs are listed below add_filter( 'rock_the_slackbot_notification_(notification_event)', 'filter_rock_the_slackbot_notification_event', 10, 3 ); function filter_rock_the_slackbot_notification_event( $notification, $notification_event, $event_args ) { // Change the pieces // Return the notification return $notification; } 

Filter all outgoing webhook payloads that are sent to Slack

Whether it’s a WordPress notification or a simple Slack message, all messages to Slack are sent as a payload in an outgoing webhook. This filter allows you to change any payload sent to Slack in an outgoing webhook.

add_filter( 'rock_the_slackbot_outgoing_webhook_payload', 'filter_rock_the_slackbot_outgoing_webhook_payload', 10, 2 ); function filter_rock_the_slackbot_outgoing_webhook_payload( $payload, $webhook_url ) { // Change the payload // Return the payload return $notification; }<h3>Notification Events</h3> 

Including event specific information passed to filters for each notification event.

Content

• post_published
  • Passed To Filters
    • post – the WP_Post object data of the post that was published
    • old_post_status – the status of the post before it was published
    • new_post_status – the current status of the published post
• post_unpublished
  • Passed To Filters
    • post – the WP_Post object data of the post that was unpublished
    • old_post_status – the status of the post before it was unpublished
    • new_post_status – the current status of the unpublished post
• post_updated
  • Passed To Filters
    • post_id – the post ID of the post you updated
    • post_before – the WP_Post object data of the post before it was updated
    • post_after – the WP_Post object data of the post after it was updated
• post_deleted
  • Passed To Filters
    • post – the WP_Post object data of the post that was deleted
• post_trashed
  • Passed To Filters
    • post – the WP_Post object data of the post that was trashed
• is_404
  • Passed To Filters
    • url – the URL that threw the 404 error
    • referer – the HTTP referer (may not always be defined)
    • ip_address – the IP address of the user who visited the URL (may not always be defined)
    • user_agent – the user agent of the user who visited the URL (may not always be defined)
    • wp_query – the WordPress query variables
    • mysql_request – the MySQL query request

Menus

• menu_item_deleted
  • Passed To Filters
    • menu – the WP_Post object data of the menu that held the menu item
    • menu_item_id – the post ID of the menu item that was deleted

Media

• add_attachment
  • Passed To Filters
    • attachment_post – the WP_Post object data for the attachment you added
• edit_attachment
  • Passed To Filters
    • attachment_post – the WP_Post object data for the attachment you edited
• delete_attachment
  • Passed To Filters
    • attachment_post – the WP_Post object data for the attachment you deleted

Users

• user_added
  • Passed To Filters
    • user – the WP_User data for the user you added
• user_deleted
  • Passed To Filters
    • user – the WP_User data for the user you deleted
• set_user_role
  • Passed To Filters
    • user – the WP_User data for the user whose role was changed
    • current_user_roles – the current user roles for the user whose role was changed
    • old_user_roles – the old user roles for the user whose role was changed

Updates

• core_update_available
  • Passed To Filters
    • current_version – the current version number of WordPress core
    • new_version – the version number for the WordPress core update
• core_updated
  • Passed To Filters
    • current_version – the current version number of WordPress core after the update
    • old_version – the old version number for WordPress core before the update
• plugin_update_available
  • Passed To Filters
    • plugins – includes an array of the plugins who have updates available
• plugin_updated
  • Passed To Filters
    • plugin – includes an array of the plugin(s) that were updated
• theme_update_available
  • Passed To Filters
    • themes – includes an array of the themes who have updates available
• theme_updated
  • Passed To Filters
    • theme – includes an array of the theme(s) that were updated

Filter Examples

You can use a filter to change the Slack notification to go to a different Slack channel according to post information, like the post category:

add_filter( 'rock_the_slackbot_notification', 'filter_rock_the_slackbot_notification', 10, 3 ); function filter_rock_the_slackbot_notification( $notification, $notification_event, $event_args ) { // Only run filter for specific events switch ( $notification_event ) { // This way you can set which events you want to use case 'post_published': case 'post_unpublished': case 'post_updated': case 'post_deleted': case 'post_trashed': // Get category names $categories = wp_get_post_categories( $event_args[ 'post_id' ], array( 'fields' => 'names' ) ); // Replace 'CategoryName' with the category you're looking for if ( in_array( 'CategoryName', $categories ) ) { // Change the channel in the payload // Make sure you prefix the channel name with # $notification[ 'payload' ][ 'channel' ] = '#newchannel'; } break; } // Return the notification return $notification; } 

1. Upload ‘rock-the-slackbot’ to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. Go to Tools > Rock The Slackbot

1.1.2

• You can now cancel sending the notification by returning false to “rock_the_slackbot_notification” or “rock_the_slackbot_outgoing_webhook_payload” filter.
• Added “When Slack Notifications Fail” setting so users can control whether or not emails are sent when Slack notifications fail.
• Added ‘rock_the_slackbot_error_email’ filter which allows you to customize the error “didn’t send to Slack” email.
• Added notifications for ‘When a post is drafted’, ‘When a post is pending review’, and ‘When a post is scheduled’.
• Added notifications for when a comment is added, approved, unapproved, marked as spam, and trashed.
• Fixed issue where channel had to be set for messages to send.
• Added translations for English (Australia), French (France), German, Portuguese (Brazil), and Spanish (Spain).
• Added messaging to clarify use of WordPress icon in Slack messages.

1.1.1

• Added process to test webhook URL on settings page.
• Can now send the same notification to multiple Slack channels.
• Added event-specific information to go with each filter.
• Created rock_the_slackbot()->send_webhook_message() to make it easy for users to send simple, custom messages to Slack via webhook.
• Updated the notification filters so they include the notification pieces, the slug of the notification event, and event specific information so you can make adjustments according to the event.
• Fixed bug where filters weren’t “inheriting” each other.
• Added ‘rock_the_slackbot_outgoing_webhook_payload’ filter which allows you to change any payload sent to Slack in an outgoing webhook.
• Fixed where the webhook URL wasn’t being sent to the filters.
• If you use send_notification() from the Rock_The_Slackbot_Notifications class, that class has been heavily changed. You can now use rock_the_slackbot()->send_webhook_message() to send a custom message.

1.1.0

• Rock The Slackbot is now multisite compatible!
• Setup Slack notification when a plugin, theme, or core update is available – will need to enable
• Setup Slack notification when a user’s role has changed – will need to enable
• Adding wp_get_referer(), IP address, and HTTP_USER_AGENT fields to the 404 notification.

1.0.0

Plugin launch