Error: Invalid response at Request._callback

[imballinst]

Botkit version: 0.5.4
Operating system: Ubuntu 16.04
Steps to reproduce:

• I used PM2 as my process monitor
• I ran the app
• I changed a line of code/restarted the app manually (I used PM2 watch feature). After that, sometimes, I couldn't connect to Slack RTM with error message given below. My guess is, my bot instance is somewhat "still connected" to Slack RTM API after restarting the app, and it can't override the "stuck" connection. Waiting for 15-20 seconds before trying again solved the problem.

Error message:

{"message":"Invalid response","stack":"Error: Invalid response\n    at Request._callback (/home/imballinst/Documents/personal/insta-slackbot/node_modules/botkit/lib/Slack_web_api.js:259:32)\n    at Request.self.callback (/home/imballinst/Documents/personal/insta-slackbot/node_modules/request/request.js:188:22)\n    at emitTwo (events.js:106:13)\n    at Request.emit (events.js:191:7)\n    at Request.<anonymous> (/home/imballinst/Documents/personal/insta-slackbot/node_modules/request/request.js:1171:10)\n    at emitOne (events.js:96:13)\n    at Request.emit (events.js:188:7)\n    at IncomingMessage.<anonymous> (/home/imballinst/Documents/personal/insta-slackbot/node_modules/request/request.js:1091:12)\n    at IncomingMessage.g (events.js:291:16)\n    at emitNone (events.js:91:20)"}

The error happened at these line of codes:

// botInstance is the object which was created using the .spawn(token)
botInstance.startRTM((err) => {
      if (err) {
        // I used winston as logger
        LogUtil.winston.log('error', err);
      }
});

Am I missing something here? I didn't find the error code Invalid response either from https://api.slack.com/methods/rtm.connect, so I think the problem lies in this module. Any insight/help greatly appreciated, thanks! :)

[jonchurch]

If you turn on debug mode (pass debug: true into your controller config) you will be able to see the actual response from the slack API call that is failing.

Comes from this line in the slack web api file.

Looks like a call to connect rtm is going bad somehow, it is not returning a 200 or a 429 (rate limited) so the lib doesnt know what to do with it.

Note: the rtm api is a mess, which is why slack introduced the Events API. You can use either, or both, with botkit. You sacrifice typing indicators (which Slack has not added to the Events API yet) but get a stable connection to slack.

[imballinst]

Wow! I didn't know about these two things (about the debug option could "reveal" the real response and the unstable RTM API). Thanks for the suggestions, I will try them soon! :)