Let's Bot In!

I was trying out the steps on building a slack bot and I would like to share my notes with you guys.

Here are some takeaways on this blog:

1. How to set the base Python Version in your virtual environment.

2. How to switch to the created virtual environments.

3. How to export environment variables in windows.

Let's start!

I am running a Windows 8.1 machine with both python 2.7 and 3.5 installed in their respective folders.

c:\Python27

c:\Python35

Part of the process is to create a virtual environment to have an independent library structure and avoid conflicts. I created a virtual environment via PowerShell and used python 3.5 as the base. Here's a guide on how to create virualenv on Windows with PowerShell.

To run PowerShell in Windows, go to the command prompt and run: C:\>powershell C:\>powershell Windows PowerShell Copyright (C) 2014 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. PS C:\> python Python 2.7.12 (v2.7.12:d33e0cf91556, Jun 27 2016, 15:19:22) [MSC v.1500 32 bit (Intel)] on win32 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>>

 

By default, my machine is runnning Python 2.7. To set the base Python version of the virtual environment to 3.5, perform the steps below: Go to your virtual environmnt directory: PS C:> d: PS D:\> cd .\virtual_environments

 Set the base Python version: PS D:\virtual_environments> virtualenv -p c:\python35\python.exe bot-test-5 Running virtualenv with interpreter c:\python35\python.exe Using base prefix 'c:\\python35' New python executable in D:\virtual_environments\bot-test-5\Scripts\python.exe Installing setuptools, pip, wheel...done. PS D:\virtual_environments>

To work on or switch to other virtual environments, use the command: PS virtuaenv_directory:\workon virtualenv_name

One of the challenges I had was how to export the secret tokens as environment variables. The line below does not work for me. export SLACK_BOT_TOKEN='your slack token pasted here'

The syntax is different for windows. After searching the interwebs, this article helped me out. I replaced the line instead with the script below and I was able to extract the bot ID.: os.environ["SLACK_BOT_TOKEN"]='slack token'

That's about it! I just followed the steps and was able to deploy a slack bot! Developing the bot brains is a different story, but hey! I got it working... hohohoho..