Slack Attachment error : private_url is undefined

Question

I have a simple code that's supposed to download images from slack messages.

 var url = message.file.private_url;

 var destination_path = './tmp/uploaded';

  var opts = {
  method: 'GET',
  url: url,
  headers: {
    Authorization: 'Bearer ' + process.env.botToken,
  }
};
request(opts, function(err, res, body) {
      console.log('FILE RETRIEVE STATUS',res.statusCode);
  }).pipe(fs.createWriteStream(destination_path));

The code worked fine for a while, but now I'm getting this error:

An error occured in the receive middleware: TypeError: Cannot read property 'private_url' of undefined

Any help would be appreciated!

Which Slack API are you hitting? What's the `url`? – Joel Aug 02 '18 at 20:21 — Joel, Aug 02 '18 at 20:21
I'm using the events API – Parker Simpson Aug 02 '18 at 21:22 — Parker Simpson, Aug 02 '18 at 21:22

Joel · Answer 1 · 2018-08-02T20:46:24.343

1

Are you using the events API?

Several changes have been made to the API recently (both Events and Web APIs). See here: https://api.slack.com/changelog/2018-05-file-threads-soon-tread

If you describe the API you're using, I might be able to provide more specific help but I suspect the issue (as described in the link above) is that the file attribute attached to messages has been replaced with a new files field (an array). The files in the array are also in a different format.

Check the JSON payload. It probably contains a files array.

edited Aug 02 '18 at 20:46

answered Aug 02 '18 at 20:40

Joel

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I am indeed using the events API – Parker Simpson Aug 02 '18 at 21:22
@ParkerSimpson In that case, see the `Discontinued events` section of the link I sent. You may find that you just need to use the new files array instead of file. E.G message.files[0].private_url – Joel Aug 06 '18 at 15:06

Slack Attachment error : private_url is undefined

1 Answers1