CosmicCraft - Stardance

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@CosmicCraft on My first slack bot! · about 4 hours ago

What did you build?

I created a custom Slack bot using Node.js and @slack/bolt framework on a Hack Club Nest Linux server that constantly works as a systemd background process and reacts to slash commands all day long.

What was tricky?
Working in the Linux command line was difficult at first. I had to find out how to SSH using IPv6 address, fix the npm installation failure due to the lack of a package.json file and securely create .env variables directly in the server using nano editor.

What are you proud of?
The thing I am proud of is the ability to run my bot constantly in the background. Creating a systemd file for the first time and seeing the status “active (running)” on the server means I have managed to deploy an application that works constantly.

What should people know to test your project?
In order to test the project, one has to join the workspace with the bot on Slack and use the slash command. As it works constantly on Nest, it will instantly respond without any need of my laptop being turned on.

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@CosmicCraft on My first slack bot! · about 4 hours ago

19m 18s logged

Dev Log: Setting up a Slack Bot that Runs 24/7
What I’ve Built: Slack bot in Node.js using @slack/bolt module, deployed and kept running on my Hack Club Nest Linux server.

How I Did It:

Setting Up: Set up my bot in the Slack API using Socket Mode and generated my tokens.

Connecting to Server: SSH’ed into my Nest server. Initially ran into timeout issue with IPv4 IP, but was able to connect through my public IPv6 IP.

The Blocker: Installed Git and Node.js on my server, then cloned my repo. My npm install command was unsuccessful since I hadn’t pushed my package.json file. Quickly fixed this by adding the package.json file through GitHub UI and running git pull on the server.

Going 24/7: Manually created my .env file in the server. To keep my bot running even when I close my computer, I created my own systemd background service (slackbot.service) for the node process.

Result: Success!