This is a Venmo Slack integration leveraging Slack’s slash command. Within Slack you can easily pay your co-workers using a simple command. Currently, it supports the ability to pay using their Slack username.
Slash Commands are a great way to get started with Slack integrations. Anytime a user initiates a slash command (/slackmo), Slack merely POSTs the necessary data to your provided endpoint. A sample request can be seen here:
token=gIkuvaNzQIHg97ATvDxqgjtO
team_id=T0001
team_domain=example
channel_id=C2147483705
channel_name=test
user_id=U2147483697
user_name=Steve
command=/weather
text=94070
response_url=https://hooks.slack.com/commands/1234/5678
You endpoint must parse through this data and provide a JSON response to Slack, so that it can respond back to the user. In this app, we use user_name, user_id & command to make payments on the user’s behalf.
Please Note: This app requires additional consideration around security. Ideally, the user should authenticate with the app every time they attempt to make a payment. A user could spoof one another by making a POST request to my endpoint with another user’s username and pay himself. I think it defeats the purpose of a slash command if a user must authenticate each time, so I’d be curious to see if I’m missing something here.
Supports 3 commands:
/slackmo [@username] [$amount] [note]. For example,/slackmo @mauerbac $10 lunch!/slackmo help/slackmo [@username] add [phone #]- Used for adding a new co-worker
**You can request money by using a negative dollar amount. i.e $-10
A first time user will be immediately prompted to Oauth with Venmo. A user must authenticate with Venmo so the app can make payments on their behalf. This token is saved in the app’s database for later use. A Slack username doesn’t necessarily map to a Venmo username, so I needed to create a mapping of Slack username to a Venmo identifying. In this app, I used the Slack username and Venmo phone number. If the receiver hasn’t used the app, you must supply their phone number using the /slackmo @will add [number] command.
The app has two endpoints: /main & /venmoauth, which can be seen in api/views.py. Slack POSTs all slash command data to the main endpoint and Venmo uses the venmoauth endpoint in the OAuth process.
- Register a custom slack command.
- Register an App with Venmo here. Make note of Client ID & Client Secret.
- Supply Venmo Client ID, Client Secret and Slack Token in
api/views.py. - Deploy the application and provide Slack with your endpoint.
- Give it a try!
- Add support to refresh Venmo Auth tokens when expired.
- Add better authentication to avoid co-worker spoofing.
- Add additional commands.
- Become an offical Slack Integration via the Slack Button.
Reach out to @mauerbac with questions/feedback. Thanks!