SwiftBlocksUI

SwiftBlocksUI is a way to write interactive Slack messages and modal dialogs (also known as Slack "applications") using a SwiftUI like declarative style.

A blog article containing SwiftBlocksUI tutorials: Instant “SwiftUI” Flavoured Slack Apps.
Documentation, examples: SlashCows, AvocadoToast, ClipIt!.

This is what a full application looks like:

#!/usr/bin/swift sh
import SwiftBlocksUI // @SwiftBlocksUI

dotenv.config()

struct ClipItView: Blocks {

  @State(\.messageText) var messageText
  @State var importance = "medium"
  
  var body: some Blocks {
    View("Save it to ClipIt!") {
      TextEditor("Message Text", text: $messageText)
      
      Picker("Importance", selection: $importance) {
        "High 💎💎✨".tag("high")
        "Medium 💎"  .tag("medium")
        "Low ⚪️"     .tag("low")
      }
      
      Submit("CliptIt") {
        console.log("Clip:", messageText, importance)
      }
    }
  }
}

struct ClipIt: App {

  var body: some Endpoints {
    Use(logger("dev"), bodyParser.urlencoded(),
        sslCheck(verifyToken(allowUnsetInDebug: true)))
        
    MessageAction("clipit") {
      ClipItView()
    }
  }
}

try ClipIt.main()

Looks like this:

Documentation

There is a related blog entry going over SwiftBlocksUI: Instant “SwiftUI” Flavoured Slack Apps.

Block documentation and a lot more can be found within this repository: Documentation.

Examples:

• SlashCows - Slack slash command that produces ASCII Cows. Moo!
• AvocadoToast - An Avocado Toast ordering solution.
• ClipIt! - Working on Messages.

Environment Variables

• SLACK_ACCESS_TOKEN (the token required to send requests to Slack)
• SLACK_VERIFICATION_TOKEN (shared secret with Slack to verify requests)
• PORT (the port the app is going to start on, defaults to 1337)
• LOG_SLACK_CLIENT_POSTS (set to 1 to log the JSON sent to Slack using SlackClient)
• blocks.log.blocks (yes to log the structure of outgoing API blocks)
• blocks.log.blocks.json (yes to log the raw JSON of outgoing blocks)
• macro.core.numthreads
• macro.core.iothreads
• macro.core.retain.debug
• macro.concat.maxsize
• macro.streams.debug.rc
• macro.router.debug
• macro.router.matcher.debug

Requirements

On Linux this currently requires a Swift 5.3 environment (swiftc crash, might be SR-12543).

On macOS it should work with Swift 5.2 (aka Xcode 11) and up, though 5.3 has some additional conveniences.

Links

• Macro

Who

SwiftBlocksUI is brought to you by the Always Right Institute and ZeeZide. We like feedback, GitHub stars, cool contract work, presumably any form of praise you can think of.