Chatops and Hubot the basics

Hubot was really not hard get started with. I started with it on my MacOS laptop. I already had these dependencies installed

  • node.js 5.x
  • npm
  • git

So what was left from the hubot installation instructions

  • Install hubot libraries/components: npm install -g yo generator-hubot
  • Generate an instance of hubot: mkdir hubot; cd hubot; yo hubot
  • Start hubot: bin/Hubot
  • Stop hubot: control-c

And I had a hubot instance running. I could give it commands on the command line and get responses. help showed me all the things that come by default. After trying all the default commands out, I disabled several items that I did not want ( like google translate.) To remove one of the pre-bundled items you need to

  1. Remove the item from package.json
  2. Delete the node_modules/xxxxx directory of the same name
  3. Remove the entry from external-scripts.json
  4. start/restart hubot

There are many additional plugins available at hubot scripts. Two that I installed are

  • hubot-auth - user roles to be used for command authorization
  • hubot-diagnostics - some tools to help with basic troubleshooting

To install a plugin

  1. npm install --save xxxxxx
  2. edit external-scripts.json and add the plugin
  3. start/restart hubot

Now to get slack working. I had my slack admin create a hubot integration and give me the token. Then it is just

  1. Install the plugin: npm install --save hubot-slack
  2. To my environment add the slack token: export HUBOT_SLACK_TOKEN=xoxb-XXXX-XXXXXX-XXXXXX-XXXXXX
  3. Start hubot with slack enabled: bin/hubot --adapter slack

And all of a sudden hubot showed up in my slack as a bot. Invite hubot to a room and then he will listen there.

Something that I found missing from hubot was the ability to use .env files like all my other node apps ( using dotenv or similar ). Hubot can use a .env file but it requires **export in front of each line. I am using a modified node_modules/.bin/hubot to allow me to use “normally” formatted .env files. That edit has been submitted to github

With it, my .env now has three variables

HUBOT_SLACK_TOKEN=xoxb-XXXXXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
HUBOT_AUTH_ADMIN=1
HUBOT_SALT_AUTH=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The First variable I have already talked about. The remaining two will be covered in the next two posts about Saltstack and Security.

Share This:


hubot chatops slack

Dialogue & Discussion