Slack has become a popular tool for workplace communication, allowing teams to collaborate easily. If you're a PHP developer, it can be useful to learn how to send messages to Slack. This article will show you 5 easy ways to do so.
Preconditions
- PHP installed and curl extension enabled
- Slack App with bot token created and added to the channel
-
chat:writescope is added to the App
Slack API
Slack provides a variety of API endpoints and methods, which can be found in the documentation.
Today we're gonna focus on the chat.postMessage endpoint. It sends some text TEXT to the particular channel CHANNEL_NAME by the bot BOT_API_TOKEN
curl --location 'https://slack.com/api/chat.postMessage' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer BOT_API_TOKEN' \
--data '{
"channel": "CHANNEL_NAME",
"text": "TEXT"
}'
There are a lot of ways to call this endpoint and send a message to the channel inside a PHP project. We will cover 4 of them.
HTTP request with cURL
<?php
$botApiToken = 'xoxb-your-bot-api-token';
$channelName = 'your channel name';
$text = 'Hello, I am from PHP!';
$url = "https://slack.com/api/chat.postMessage";
$curl = curl_init();
curl_setopt_array($curl, [
CURLOPT_URL => $url,
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => 'POST',
CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => json_encode([
"channel" => $channelName,
"text" => $text,
]),
CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => [
"Authorization: Bearer {$botApiToken}",
'Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8',
],
]);
curl_exec($curl);
curl_close($curl);
Symfony HTTP client
Symfony is one of the most popular PHP frameworks. It provides a lot of different components out of the box and one of them is HTTP Client. It allows you to make HTTP requests easily.
Installation
composer require symfony/http-client
Standalone
<?php
require 'vendor/autoload.php';
use Symfony\Component\HttpClient\HttpClient;
$botApiToken = 'xoxb-your-bot-api-token';
$channelName = 'your channel name';
$text = 'Hello, I am from Symfony HTTP Client!';
$client = HttpClient::create([
'base_uri' => 'https://slack.com',
]);
$client->request('POST', "/api/chat.postMessage", [
'headers' => [
'Accept' => 'application/json; charset=utf-8',
],
'auth_bearer' => $botApiToken,
'json' => [
'channel' => $channelName,
'text' => $text,
],
]);
Inside Symfony app
Prepare scoped client inside config/packages/framework.yaml
parameters:
env(SLACK_BOT_API_TOKEN): 'xoxb-your-bot-api-token'
framework:
http_client:
scoped_clients:
slack.client:
base_uri: 'https://slack.com'
auth_bearer: '%env(SLACK_BOT_API_TOKEN)%'
headers:
Accept: 'application/json; charset=utf-8'
And use it inside your service
<?php
namespace App;
use Symfony\Contracts\HttpClient\HttpClientInterface;
class YourService
{
public function __construct(
private readonly HttpClientInterface $slackClient,
)
{
}
public function sendMessage(string $text): void
{
$channelName = 'your channel name';
$this->slackClient->request('POST', '/api/chat.postMessage', [
'json' => [
'channel' => $channelName,
'text' => $text,
],
]);
}
}
Symfony Slack Notifier
Another Symfony component that can send a message to the Slack channel is Slack Notifier.
Installation
composer require symfony/slack-notifier
Standalone
<?php
require 'vendor/autoload.php';
use Symfony\Component\Notifier\Bridge\Slack\SlackTransport;
use Symfony\Component\Notifier\Chatter;
use Symfony\Component\Notifier\Message\ChatMessage;
$botApiToken = 'xoxb-your-bot-api-token';
$channelName = 'your channel name';
$text = 'Hello, I am from Symfony Slack Notifier!';
$slackTransport = new SlackTransport($botApiToken, $channelName);
$chatter = new Chatter($slackTransport);
$chatMessage = new ChatMessage($text);
$chatter->send($chatMessage);
Inside Symfony app
Configure notifier chatter transport inside
config/packages/framework.yaml
parameters:
env(SLACK_DSN): 'slack://BOT_API_TOKEN@default?channel=CHANNEL_NAME'
framework:
notifier:
chatter_transports:
slack: '%env(SLACK_DSN)%'
And use it inside your service
<?php
namespace App;
use Symfony\Component\Notifier\ChatterInterface;
use Symfony\Component\Notifier\Message\ChatMessage;
class YourService
{
public function __construct(
private readonly ChatterInterface $slackChatter
)
{
}
public function sendMessage(string $text): void
{
$this->slackChatter->send(new ChatMessage($text));
}
}
jolicode PHP client for Slack's API
There are other framework agnostic libraries that can help you send a message to the Slack channel. Slack calls them Community Tools.
One of them is jolicode's PHP client for Slack's API
Installation
composer require jolicode/slack-php-api
Standalone
<?php
require 'vendor/autoload.php';
use JoliCode\Slack\Api\Client;
use JoliCode\Slack\ClientFactory;
$botApiToken = 'xoxb-your-bot-api-token';
$channelName = 'your channel name';
$text = 'Hello, I am from Jolicode Client!';
/** @var Client $client */
$client = ClientFactory::create($botApiToken);
$client->chatPostMessage([
'channel' => $channelName,
'text' => $text,
]);
Slack Webhook
Another way to send a message to a channel is Slack Webhook.
You can create your webhook here
After webhook is created, copy YOUR_WEBHOOK_URL and make a simple cURL request. It will send TEXT to your CHANNEL_NAME.
curl --location 'YOUR_WEBHOOK_URL' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data '{
"channel": "CHANNEL_NAME",
"text": "TEXT"
}'
In PHP it will look like this
<?php
$text = 'Hello, I am from PHP Slack Webhook!';
$channelName = 'your channel name';
$url = "your webhook url";
$curl = curl_init();
curl_setopt_array($curl, [
CURLOPT_URL => $url,
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => 'POST',
CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => json_encode([
"channel" => $channelName,
"text" => $text,
]),
CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => [
'Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8',
],
]);
curl_exec($curl);
curl_close($curl);
Summary
There are many ways to send a message to a Slack channel. It can be done using a Slack App or a Slack Webhook The choice you make depends on your needs and the technologies you're working with. This article shows 5 simple ways to send messages to Slack using PHP, in fact there are many more than five and it's up to you which one to use.
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