Slack bot that converts pdf links to abs and posts it in thread.

abstractify_bot.py

import os
import time
from slackclient import SlackClient
import re


slack_client = SlackClient(apikey)


def proc_out(msg):
    try:
        if msg['type'] == 'message':
            text = msg['text'].lower()
            insts = [m.start() for m in re.finditer('arxiv.org/pdf/', text)]
            chan = msg['channel']
            if 'thread_ts' in msg:
                ts = msg['thread_ts']
            else:
                ts = msg['ts']
            links = []
            for inst in insts:
                lk = text[inst + 14:inst + 24]
                if text.find('arxiv.org/abs/' + str(lk)) == -1:
                    links.append('https://arxiv.org/abs/' + str(lk))
            links = list(set(links))
            if links != []:
                response = 'Please, stop using links to pdfs.\n'
                response += 'Here are your links to abstracts:\n'
                for link in links[:-1]:
                    response += link + '\n'
                response += links[-1]
                slack_client.api_call("chat.postMessage", channel=chan,
                              text=response, as_user=True, thread_ts=ts)
    except Exception as e:
        print(e)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    READ_WEBSOCKET_DELAY = 1 # 1 second delay between reading from firehose
    if slack_client.rtm_connect():
        print("StarterBot connected and running!")
        while True:
            res = slack_client.rtm_read()
            if res != []:
                for r in res:
                    proc_out(r)
            time.sleep(READ_WEBSOCKET_DELAY)