Real Time Messaging (RTM)

The Real Time Messaging API is a WebSocket-based API that allows you to receive events from Slack in real-time and send messages as users. It's sometimes referred to just as the "RTM API".

danger

RTM isn't available for modern scoped apps anymore. We recommend using the Events API and Web API instead. If you need to use RTM (possibly due to corporate firewall limitations), you can do so by creating a legacy scoped app. If you have an existing RTM app, do not update its scopes as it will be updated to a modern scoped app and stop working with RTM.

---

Prerequisites

To use the RTM Client, in addition to the slack-api-client library, javax.websocket-api and tyrus-standalone-client (1.x) are required. Here is a minimum Maven settings file.

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <groupId>com.example</groupId>
  <artifactId>awesome-slack-app</artifactId>
  <version>0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
  <packaging>jar</packaging>
  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>com.slack.api</groupId>
      <artifactId>slack-api-client</artifactId>
      <version>1.44.1</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>javax.websocket</groupId>
      <artifactId>javax.websocket-api</artifactId>
      <version>1.1</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.glassfish.tyrus.bundles</groupId>
      <artifactId>tyrus-standalone-client</artifactId>
      <version>1.20</version>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>
</project>

---

Subscribing Slack Events Over WebSocket

Here is a minimum working example demonstrating how event handlers work.

import com.slack.api.Slack;
import com.slack.api.model.event.UserTypingEvent;
import com.slack.api.rtm.*;
import com.slack.api.rtm.message.*;

// Dispatches incoming message events from RTM API
RTMEventsDispatcher dispatcher = RTMEventsDispatcherFactory.getInstance();

// Register a event handler runtime
RTMEventHandler<UserTypingEvent> userTyping = new RTMEventHandler<UserTypingEvent>() {
  @Override
  public void handle(UserTypingEvent event) {
    // do something here
  }
};
dispatcher.register(userTyping);

String botToken = System.getenv("SLACK_BOT_TOKEN");
Slack slack = Slack.getInstance();

// Initialize the client with a valid WSS URL
RTMClient rtm = slack.rtmConnect(botToken);
// Establish a WebSocket connection and start subscribing Slack events
rtm.connect();

// Enable an event dispatcher
rtm.addMessageHandler(dispatcher.toMessageHandler());

// Deregister a event handler runtime
dispatcher.deregister(userTyping);

// Send messages over a WebSocket connection
String channelId = "C1234567";
String message = Message.builder().id(1234567L).channel(channelId).text(":wave: Hi there!").build().toJSONString();
rtm.sendMessage(message);

// To subscribe "presence_change" events
String userId = "U1234567";
String presenceQuery = PresenceQuery.builder().ids(Arrays.asList(userId)).build().toJSONString();
rtm.sendMessage(presenceQuery);
String presenceSub = PresenceSub.builder().ids(Arrays.asList(userId)).build().toJSONString();
rtm.sendMessage(presenceSub);

// A bit heavy-weight operation to re-establish a WS connection for sure
// Don't call this method frequently - it will result in a rate-limited error
rtm.reconnect();

// Disconnect from Slack - #close() method does the same
rtm.disconnect();