Introducting Azure Functions Slack binding
I am proud to announce the first version of my Slack Azure WebJobs Extension. The binding extension eases out the integration with Slack for sending messages. It also includes an easy way to create rich messages using Slack’s Block Kit. The blocks and its related elements also have implement validation to adhere to Slack’s API validation rules. This helps to have a first level validation before sending the requests to Slack and get a response of type 400: invalid_blocks.
You can find the extension here.
So for the ones who care a little bit more, here’s a of bit of context as to why I spent some time creating the binding extension. I was looking for an easy way to add Slack to an Azure Function. The first thing I did was browse the internet. I saw that Microsoft already had some binding extensions for 3rd parties that included Twilio but not Slack. I also saw that some people had created some bindings for Slack, but they weren’t production ready (as per shown on their readme) or were simply samples. Kudos to this gentleman here, he did do and publish a Slack binding, but it uses the deprecated Slack attachments. Slack warns that they will continue to support them, but their visibility may get reduced in the future and highly advises to use the Block Kit.
I also saw a lot of people coding the whole flow in various ways in their Function. That’s when I decided it would be cool to create a binding that can have some kind of standardization on its usage.
Some may say it’s not much, but for me it’s quite an accomplishment. Again, this is my way of thanking the community for such a great job everyone is doing. Without your commitment, nothing of what I do would be possible.
I’m hoping you can contribute and make this binding one hell of a lot cooler! Do report bugs as this is crucial in making this useful for everyone.
