Find Slack User

GitHub Action to find a Slack user data by email.

Configuration

This GitHub Action is using the users.lookupByEmail API method and that requires to set up an app and a bot token.

When you create the bot token, it must require the users:read.email scope. If you don't set the scope, the GitHub Action won't work.

Follow this guide to create an app and a bot token.

Usage

To get started, you might want to copy the content of the next example into .github/workflows/cloudways-deploy.yml and push that file to your repository.

In the example, the deployment will start when you create and push a new tag. You can change that behavior, for example, when you create a release or a simple push to your main branch.

name: Send Slack Notifications

on:
  push:
    tags:
      - "*"

jobs:
  tag:
    name: New Tag

    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - name: Checkout Code
        uses: actions/checkout@v3

      - name: Get Slack User Data
        id: slack_user
        uses: roelmagdaleno/find-slack-user-action@stable
        with:
          email: "custom@example.org"
          fields: "id,name,profile.avatar_hash"
        env:
          SLACK_BOT_TOKEN: xoxb-xxxxxx-xxxxxxx

      - name: Notify Slack Channel
        uses: slackapi/slack-github-action@v1.23.0
        with:
          channel-id: C0XXXXXXXXC
          payload: |
            {
              "text": "This is my user: <@${{ steps.slack_user.outputs.id }}> -- This is my name: ${{ steps.slack_user.outputs.name }} -- And this is my avatar_hash: ${{ steps.slack_user.outputs.profile_avatar_hash }}"
            }
        env:
          SLACK_BOT_TOKEN: xoxb-xxxxxx-xxxxxxx

If you don't see your last changes in your server after run the GitHub Action then check whether your Git branch is updated with the changes.

Environment

You must provide the SLACK_BOT_TOKEN as environment value, so the GitHub Action can connect to Slack API and retrieve the desired data.

Required Inputs

You must provide all of these inputs in your workflow file.

email

The Slack email that will be used to find the user data.

fields

The fields you want to get from the user.

The value is a string with the fields you want from the user separated by commas:

- name: Get Slack User Data
  id: slack_user
  uses: roelmagdaleno/find-slack-user-action@stable
  with:
    email: "custom@example.org"
    fields: "id,name"

Also, you can use dot notation to get nested data:

- name: Get Slack User Data
  id: slack_user
  uses: roelmagdaleno/find-slack-user-action@stable
  with:
    email: "custom@example.org"
    fields: "id,name,profile.avatar_hash"

Check the Available Fields section to know what are the fields that Slack provides.

Outputs

The GitHub Action will output the fields you specified in the fields attribute.

Let's use this action as an example:

- name: Get Slack User Data
  id: slack_user
  uses: roelmagdaleno/find-slack-user-action@stable
  with:
    email: "custom@example.org"
    fields: "id,name,profile.avatar_hash"

Single Fields

You can access the outputs like this:

${{ steps.<step_id>.outputs.<field> }}

You need to specify an id to your current step, so you can access the data of that step. In our example, the id is slack_user.

Then, you need to specify what field you want to get. This is one of the field values you put in your fields attribute.

At the end, your output command would look like this:

${{ steps.slack_user.outputs.id }}
${{ steps.slack_user.outputs.name }}

Nested Fields (Dot Notation)

The output usage for nested fields is similar as single fields. The only difference is the output field will use the keys to get a new object property.

In our example, we want to get the avatar_hash that is inside the profile property. And, in our fields we specified it as profile.avatar_hash.

At the end, your output command, for nested fields, would look like this:

${{ steps.slack_user.outputs.profile_avatar_hash }}
${{ steps.slack_user.outputs.profile_display_name }}

As you can see, the profile property will be used as a prefix for the data you really want.

The user output

It also outputs the user value that contains the user data you specified in the fields attribute.

The user output is a JSON in string format (GitHub does this by default with all JSON values).

So, if you want to use the data as JSON you will have to use the fromJson function that GitHub provides.

${{ fromJson(steps.slack_user.outputs.user).id }}
${{ fromJson(steps.slack_user.outputs.user).profile.avatar_hash }}

Available Fields

The Slack API provides you the next available fields in a successful response:

{
    "id": "W012A3CDE",
    "team_id": "T012AB3C4",
    "name": "spengler",
    "deleted": false,
    "color": "9f69e7",
    "real_name": "Egon Spengler",
    "tz": "America/Los_Angeles",
    "tz_label": "Pacific Daylight Time",
    "tz_offset": -25200,
    "profile": {
        "avatar_hash": "ge3b51ca72de",
        "status_text": "Print is dead",
        "status_emoji": ":books:",
        "real_name": "Egon Spengler",
        "display_name": "spengler",
        "real_name_normalized": "Egon Spengler",
        "display_name_normalized": "spengler",
        "email": "spengler@ghostbusters.example.com",
        "image_24": "https://.../avatar/e3b51ca72dee4ef87916ae2b9240df50.jpg",
        "image_32": "https://.../avatar/e3b51ca72dee4ef87916ae2b9240df50.jpg",
        "image_48": "https://.../avatar/e3b51ca72dee4ef87916ae2b9240df50.jpg",
        "image_72": "https://.../avatar/e3b51ca72dee4ef87916ae2b9240df50.jpg",
        "image_192": "https://.../avatar/e3b51ca72dee4ef87916ae2b9240df50.jpg",
        "image_512": "https://.../avatar/e3b51ca72dee4ef87916ae2b9240df50.jpg",
        "team": "T012AB3C4"
    },
    "is_admin": true,
    "is_owner": false,
    "is_primary_owner": false,
    "is_restricted": false,
    "is_ultra_restricted": false,
    "is_bot": false,
    "updated": 1502138686,
    "is_app_user": false,
    "has_2fa": false
}