A project that uses the slack-machine package and the Slack Developer Kit for Python to provide a customizable LaTeX-rendering Slack bot.
Install this project's dependencies with
pip install slack-machine
pip install slackclient
Also, make sure you have the pdflatex and convert commands available. pdflatex typically comes with any standard LaTeX distribution, and convert comes pre-installed in most Linux distros.
In local-settings.py, set the variable SLACK_API_TOKEN to the API token given to you by Slack in your bot's configuration.
The bot can be started by entering slack-machine into your shell.
After you clone this repository, go into the repository's root directory with cd slack-latexbot and set the virtual environment's python version to at least Python 3.6 (slack-machine requires Python 3 and won't play nice with Python 2) and install the dependencies using the following commands:
pipenv --python 3.6
pipenv install slack-machine
pipenv install slackclient
Also, make sure you have the pdflatex and convert commands available. pdflatex typically comes with any standard LaTeX distribution, and convert comes pre-installed in most Linux distros.
In local-settings.py, set the variable SLACK_API_TOKEN to the API token given to you by Slack in your bot's configuration.
The bot can be started by entering pipenv run slack-machine into your shell while you are in the project's root directory.
These instructions apply to GNU/Linux-based operating systems.
If you want the bot to keep running after you exit your shell or log out, you can use GNU Screen. If you have Screen installed, then cd into your local copy of this repository and run screen. Then dismiss the message that comes up by pressing space or enter. Now, start the bot with slack-machine or pipenv run slack-machine depending on if you used pipenv to install the dependencies or not, and then press Ctrl+a, and d to detach the screen instance. If you wish to kill all instances of the bot, you may do so with killall slack-machine.
If you wish to start a detached Screen instance with the bot automatically, simply enter screen -dm slack-machine or screen -dm pipenv run slack-machine. To re-attach to the Screen instance (e.g., if you want to view some output produced by the bot), enter screen -r.
Whenever a user begins their message with =tex, the rest of the message is interpreted as if it were put between the standard \begin{document} and \end{document} tags. For example, entering the message
=tex $\int_{-\infty}^{\infty} e^{-x^2} \mathrm dx = \sqrt{\pi}$
in any channel which the bot is a member of (including DMs) will cause the bot to respond with the image below.
The =t command is a shorthand command that interprets the message text as if it were all one equation. No delimiters are required when using =t. An example usage would be =t 1\neq 2. This command takes the user's message and wraps it between two $ signs and then interprets the resulting string in the same way the =tex command would.
The =help command will cause the bot to send a help message with information about all of the available commands.
- Allow users to import custom packages (e.g., by entering
=tex{packagename} <message>) - Remove dependency on slack-machine and rewrite using only SlackClient
- Send 'typing...' indicator when a request to convert LaTeX is received, so that users can know that their message was received and is being processed.