Basic Newman Slack Bot

This is a basic express app with a single POST route, which will allow you to run Postman collections and environment files with newman, straight from a Slack channel.

Installing the modules and running the express app on a local machine
Locally running the express app with Docker
Installing the Newman Runner app in Slack
Using the Newman Runner app in a Slack channel
Deploying the express app to Heroku
What else can I do with the express app

Installing the modules and running the express app on a local machine

To use a Custom Slash Command in Slack, the express app needs to be running and the endpoints are publicly accessible - How do we get around this for testing on a local machine?

I've managed to workaround this and use my local machine as the host, by using the localtunnel npm module.

Clone this basic-newman-slack-bot repo and install all the npm modules using the npm install command in a terminal.

The basic-newman-slack-bot has been pre-loaded with a few example files, these files can be found in the ./collections and ./environments folders:

- collections
    - Restful_Booker_Collection.json
- environments
    - Local_Restful_Booker_Environment.json
    - Staging_Restful_Booker_Environment.json
    - Production_Restful_Booker_Environment.json

These files will tell newman where to make the requests too. We'll be using the Restful-Booker API, this is a publicly available set of endpoints, that I had no control over so it might be worth doing a quick check first, just to know that the API is alive....or you might see a lot of test failures.

In the same terminal, navigate to the cloned directory and start the express server using the npm start command. This will start the app on port 3000.

In a separate terminal, within the same directory, use the npm run start-tunnel command, this will return a publicly available URL that can be used in Slack. You should now see something that looks like the image below:

Locally running the express app with Docker

Running the app locally using Docker can achieved using the docker-compose up command from the terminal. This will create the images and start the containers, once started, you can use the same localtunnel created URL https://newman-app.localtunnel.me within Slack.

Note - If you make changes to any of the files or add things like your own collection or environment files, you will need to run the docker-compose build command, for the changes to take effect.

Installing the Newman Runner app in Slack

For this demonstration, I have my own personal dannysslack Workspace, that I created so I'm in full control of everything, this might not be the case for you. If your Slack Workspace is locked down by any sort of Admin, work with them to install the Custom Slash Command into the Workspace.

It feels a bit wrong for me to just repeat Slack's documentation on how to add a Custom Slash Command to a Workspace - The effort and attention that these user guides have been given is amazing, it's really easy to follow and you get up and running in next to no time.

I'm going to explain how to do it using the method I went through but for the full details, I would absolutely jump over to Slack and check out the official guide.

Go to the Create a slash command page
Scroll down to the "Creating a Slash Command" section and press the "Create your slack app" button
In the dialog box, give your App a name (I called mine 'Newman Test Runner') and select the Workspace that the app will belong too
Press the "Create app" button
Select the "Slash Command" option and then press the "Create New Command" button
Choose a command "/something" and add the app URL and POST route path - For example: "https://newman-app.localtunnel.me/newmanRun" if you're running it locally.
Give it a short description and press "Save"

We have now created our Custom Slash Command but before we can use it in the Workspace, we need to authorize it first.

We can do this by selecting "OAuth & Permissions" from the menu options and then pressing the "Install App to Workspace" button. Finally, we hit the "Authorize" button and we're all set.

The Custom Slash Command is now created and Authorized to be used within the specified Workspace.

Using the Newman Runner app in a Slack channel

You can now run the command and see the results returned within any created channel in the Workspace. In the example below, I'm using the /testrun command, which I added during the Slack installation, to start the run - As you've added the app to the Workspace, it will show in the auto-complete/actions list.

The files in the ./environments folder have been pre-fixed with Local, Staging and Production this is to show that you can tell the app to run the Postman collection on a specific environment.

The example environment files in this repo contain the same data, they will send the same requests to the same endpoints and you will get back the same responses for each one. You could replace these files with your own configured environments and run your requests against different endpoints. The name of the Environment File, listed in the Summary Test Result message is taken from the name property inside the .JSON file.

There is an optional IterationCount parameter that can be added, This value is set to 1 by default but can be changed by specifying a number in the run command.

There are a couple of different responses that you will receive back into Slack once the Newman Run has completed. I'm just using a few of the details contained in the newman summary object that gets created after the newman test run and then displaying these in the Slack message.

If all the tests Pass, your message will look something like this:

If you have specified an iteractionCount, it will look something like this:

If any of the tests have been skipped from the Newman Run, these will be listed in the message under the Skipped Tests section. This will also adjust the No. Of Assertions to reflect the correct total of Tests run:

If there are any test failures from the Newman Run, these will be listed in the message under the Test Failures section:

If the Newman Run failed before running the Collection or there was a syntax error within a test etc. This will return a Newman Error message with a description of the error:

Deploying the express app to Heroku

Just as a means to show you it working outside of the local environment and demonstrate something you could deploy yourself, I'm going to be using Heroku. This is a platform-as-a-service provider, that will allow you to deploy the application code onto a machine running nodejs, install all the dependencies from the package.json file and give you a public facing URL as an entry point into the express app.

Heroku offers a free account which allows you to easily get up and running in seconds, as it's a free version, the app goes to 'sleep' after a longer period of inactivity but you 'wake it up' when it receives another POST request. Head over to Heroku, sign up and Log yourself in.

Once you're logged in, you can use the one click 'Deploy to Heroku' button - This will open the Heroku deploy page in the same window so I would recommend opening it in a new tab. I tried using HTML within the markdown to open it in a new window but apparently GitHub doesn't like this method. :(

Heroku takes all the information contained in the app.json file and this tells it what to deploy.

Give your application a unique name (I've called mine dd-test-app), this will form part of the URL, it will create something like this https://dd-test-app.herokuapp.com.

Once you have a valid name, select a region and hit the "Deploy App" button.

This will then build the application and deploy it on the Heroku platform, the whole process takes ~30 seconds so it's super quick. :)

You will now be able to use the https://dd-test-app.herokuapp.com/newmanRun URL, or whatever you called your app, within Slack by following the Custom Slash Command instructions.

What else can I do with the express app

Change the environment file names

Currently, there is mechanism in place that will check that the environment value entered in the Slack command, matches a filename in the ./environments folder. If it doesn't find that filename in the ./environments folder, you will see this message returned:

You could modify this filename check and the newman.run object to point to your own files, in the ./collections and ./environments folders.

In the example below, if your environment file was named Local_Environment.json - Using the /testrun Local command within Slack, would check that the filename exists in the ./environments folder and then run the requests using those values in the file. You would need to change the filename variable in the app.js file to match your own naming convention.

    const filename = `./environments/${enteredEnv}_Environment.json`

        newman.run({
            collection: './collections/My_New_Collection.json',
            environment: environmentFile,
            iterationCount: iterationCount,
            reporters: ['cli', 'htmlextra'],
            reporter: {
                htmlextra: {
                    export: './reports/htmlResults.html',
                    template: './reports/templates/template.hbs'
                }
            }
        }

Add additional Newman options

The newman.run object has lots of different options available that will change the way the test run is configured. If you wanted to add an iterationData file, that holds specific values needed for the run, it can be done in the following way. The relative path to the file would need to be correct.

        newman.run({
            collection: './collections/Restful_Booker_Collection.json',
            environment: './environments/Local_Restful_Booker_Environment.json',
            iterationCount: iterationCount,
            iterationData: './mynewfolder/mydatafile.csv',
            reporters: ['htmlextra'],
            reporter: {
                htmlextra: {
                    export: './reports/htmlResults.html'
                }
            }
        }

Custom HTML Reports

I've added the newman-reporter-htmlextra module to the app, this creates a custom HTML report that will show the full summary of the newman test run.

The Slack message output looks the same but the title is now a hyperlink that points to https://newman-app.localtunnel.me/htmlResults.html - By clicking this link, it will open up the report in a new browser tab.

The report is created using an optional custom template file, this can be found in the ./reports/templates folder. The newman-reporter-htmlextra reporter will just create a default styled report if you don't add the template property.

To use a different template, you will need to change the path of the template option:

            reporters: ['htmlextra'],
            reporter: {
                htmlextra: {
                    export: './reports/htmlResults.html',
                    template: '<path to template>'
                }
            }

This has the run information in different tabbed sections, selecting each of these will display the details of the newman run.

For example, this is the Requests and Failed Tests tabs:

If you choose to use the Deploying the express app to Heroku method to host your express app, you will need to change the title-link property in the app.js file, to point to your heroku app URL, in order to see the generated report. Currently, this is hardcoded to the local URL.

For example:

    "title_link": "https://your-heroku-app.herokuapp.com/htmlResults.html"

The HTML report functionality is still very limited, I will be improving this to give you the ability to store the reports. I use a method to store the reports to an AWS S3 bucket but this isn't really a generic solution to add to the express app.

Hope this is useful to anyone wanting to give it a go, I'm a novice JS coder and I totally know my limitations. My first iteration of the app "worked" and returned what I wanted it too every time but the code was quite dodgy - I was shown a cleaner way of doing it by one of the awesome developers on our team, Matt Davey. He put me on the right path and this final version is very much his work too.

Enjoy....If you have any questions about the app or any feedback, you can reach me on Twitter @dannydainton.

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