I'm trying to upload an image via Slack using node.js and the request package, but not having much luck. Either I receive invalid_array_arg
or no_file_data
errors from the API.
Here is my request:
var options = { method: 'POST',
url: 'https://slack.com/api/files.upload',
headers:
{ 'cache-control': 'no-cache',
'content-type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded' },
form:
{ token: SLACK_TOKEN,
channels: SLACK_CHANNEL,
file: fs.createReadStream(filepath)
} };
request(options, function (error, response, body) {
if (error) throw new Error(error);
console.log(body);
});
I had a look at a few relevant posts:
- Can I upload an image as attachment with Slack API?
- Slack API (files.upload) using NodeJS
- fix files.upload from Buffer with formData options #307
The only thing that worked was using the curl command directly, but using cygwin (CommandPrompt failed: curl: (1) Protocol https not supported or disabled in libcurl
). The issue calling curl from node (using child_process
) but that silently fails in Command Prompt and still returns no_file_data
using cygwin (passing an absolute path to the file):
stdout: {"ok":false,"error":"no_file_data"}
stderr: % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 469 100 35 100 434 359 4461 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 6112
I'm using node v6.9.1 on Windows.
What am I missing ? How can I upload an image to slack via node.js on Windows ?
The Slack API error invalid_array_arg
means that there is a problem with the format of the arguments passed to Slack. (see here)
When using the file
property for files.upload
, Slack excepts the data as multipart/form-data
, not as application/x-www-form-urlencoded
. So instead of form
, you need to use formData
in your request object. I also removed the incorrect part in the header.
This works:
var fs = require('fs');
var request = require('request');
var SLACK_TOKEN = "xoxp-xxx";
var SLACK_CHANNEL = "general";
var filepath = "file.txt";
var options = { method: 'POST',
url: 'https://slack.com/api/files.upload',
headers:
{ 'cache-control': 'no-cache' },
formData:
{ token: SLACK_TOKEN,
channels: SLACK_CHANNEL,
file: fs.createReadStream(filepath)
} };
request(options, function (error, response, body) {
if (error) throw new Error(error);
console.log(body);
});
In this sample script, it supposes to upload a binary file (zip file). When you use this, please modify for your environment. When files are uploaded to Slack, multipart/form-data is used. In my environment, there were the situations that files couldn't be uploaded by some libraries. So I created this. If this is useful for your environment, I'm glad.
Users can upload the binary file by converting byte array as follows.
- At first, it builds form-data.
- Adds the zip file converted to byte array and boundary using Buffer.concat().
- This is used as body in request.
The sample script is as follows.
Sample script :
var fs = require('fs');
var request = require('request');
var upfile = 'sample.zip';
fs.readFile(upfile, function(err, content){
if(err){
console.error(err);
}
var metadata = {
token: "### access token ###",
channels: "sample",
filename: "samplefilename",
title: "sampletitle",
};
var url = "https://slack.com/api/files.upload";
var boundary = "xxxxxxxxxx";
var data = "";
for(var i in metadata) {
if ({}.hasOwnProperty.call(metadata, i)) {
data += "--" + boundary + "\r\n";
data += "Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"" + i + "\"; \r\n\r\n" + metadata[i] + "\r\n";
}
};
data += "--" + boundary + "\r\n";
data += "Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"file\"; filename=\"" + upfile + "\"\r\n";
data += "Content-Type:application/octet-stream\r\n\r\n";
var payload = Buffer.concat([
Buffer.from(data, "utf8"),
new Buffer(content, 'binary'),
Buffer.from("\r\n--" + boundary + "\r\n", "utf8"),
]);
var options = {
method: 'post',
url: url,
headers: {"Content-Type": "multipart/form-data; boundary=" + boundary},
body: payload,
};
request(options, function(error, response, body) {
console.log(body);
});
});