Message Webhook Proxy

A Mattermost proxy that is deployable as a Docker container to Heroku

Setting up

Before you start, you will need to complete a few tasks.

Create a Bot

Follow Mattermost documentation to create one.

Create a Bot Access Token

Create a bot access token. You will need to add the bot to a team and channel before it will be able to post messages. When you create a bot, you will see a Token ID. That is NOT what you are looking for. Click on Create New Token and type in a description. This will create an Access Token and a warning message urging you to copy it. That is the one you are looking for.

Getting the channel_id

The most challenging aspect is retrieving the channel_id. In order for the bot to be able to post messages, you need the channel_id not name. To do so, use the dev tools in your browser and click on the Members button. In the network tab, you should be able to find a request similar to

<mattermost_url>/api/v4/users?in_channel=1oy45tbdjpej5pftygr5be7k1c&page=0&per_page=100&sort=status

You are looking for the value for in_channel. In this case, 1oy45tbdjpej5pftygr5be7k1c. (There are many other ways to do this, including some fancy API calls).

Running

Localhost

#checkout code base
git clone https://github.com/raft-tech/message_webhook_proxy.git
cd message_webhook_proxy

# install dependencies
npm install

# environment variables
MM_URL="<mattermost_url>/api/v4/posts"
MM_PROXY_USERNAME="<bot_name>"
MM_PROXY_TOKEN="<bot_access_token>"

# start the server
npm start

# health test
curl localhost:3000/

# post message
curl localhost:3000/post/channel/<channel_id>/msg/<message>

Development

Run in development mode with nodemon so that the server reloads on file changes.

 npm run-script dev

Testing

Unit tests for the API endpoints are written in mocha and leverage the chai and chaiHttp node modules.

npm test

Docker

Build

# tag and build image
LOCAL_TAG='mm_proxy_server'
docker build -t $LOCAL_TAG .

# running container locally
docker run -p 3000:3000 \
  -e MM_URL='' \
  -e MM_PROXY_USERNAME='' \
  -e MM_PROXY_TOKEN='' \
  $LOCAL_TAG

Deploy to Heroku

# environment config
REPO='registry.heroku.com'
PROXY_APP_NAME='' # from Heroku

# tag image
docker tag $LOCAL_TAG registry.heroku.com/$PROXY_APP_NAME/web && \

# push to repo
docker push $REPO/$PROXY_APP_NAME/web && \

# trigger a release
heroku container:release web -a $PROXY_APP_NAME

# Tail the logs:
heroku logs -a $PROXY_APP_NAME --tail