CODEWITHSUNDEEP
slack-api
jrheling
jrheling

Reputation: 313

setting 'replace_original' to false while responding to Slack message action request doesn't work

Background: I am using the python slack API (slackclient) to build an iterative sequence of data-gathering actions in ephemeral messages.

The core of this works fine. After processing the incoming request that contains the user's interaction with a set of message buttons (or menus), I respond immediately with a JSON body, as described in the "Responding right away" section of the official slack docs.

The problem: Every response replaces the preceding message+attachments. In many cases, this is what I want, but there are situations where I want to add a response rather than replace the previous message.

Per the slack docs,setting replace_original to false should do just that. But the following code, snipped from my handling of a simple button click (for example), replaces the original button (and the text message to which it was attached):

        r = {
            'response_type': 'ephemeral',
            'text': 'foo',
            'replace_original': 'false'
        }
        log.debug("Returning: {}".format(json.dumps(r)))
        resp = Response(response=json.dumps(r),
                        mimetype="application/json",
                        status=200)
        return resp

I have tried this with and without the delete_original and response_type fields, with no change.

In short, it appears that in this case the replace_original field isn't doing anything at all; behavior is always as if it were set to 'true'.

I feel like I must be missing something here - any help is greatly appreciated.

Upvotes: 5

Views: 3981

Answers (1)

jrheling
jrheling

Reputation: 313

Simple solution here: the slack API is expecting a boolean, not a string. So 'replace_original': 'false' in the above snippet ends up as {"response_type": "ephemeral", "text": "foo", "replace_original": "false"} after the json.dumps() call, which is invalid.

Instead, setting 'replace_original': False becomes {"response_type": "ephemeral", "text": "foo", "replace_original": false}, which then has the expected behavior

Upvotes: 9

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