Hi @CGA1123, this is a great gem and really simplifies working with Slack Block Kit in a scripted way!

I notice that rich text block and it's various elements aren't currently supported. I think they're comparatively new and could be quite complicated to support.

Is this something you're aware of and likely to implement?

Trying to lay something out in a table in Slack is pretty frustrating and the next best solution is using Rich Text's list options.

Add support for plain text input element
https://api.slack.com/reference/block-kit/block-elements#input

Hey! As I mentioned in #175, we're working on improving how we handle interactions with Slack within our monolithic codebase at FireHydrant. One thing that has made this substantially easier to work with is separating out our code that generates views into Rails' ActionView layer. This path doesn't seem well-documented or well-traveled, but using jbuilder as inspiration, I've got an implementation in our codebase that handles turning a index.json.blockkit-style template into BlockKit JSON.

Essentially, it lets you write a view that looks like this:

index.json.blockkit

metadata.type "modal"
metadata.title @title

blocks.section do |section|
  section.plain_text text: "Hello, World!"
end

ExampleController

class ExampleController < ApplicationController
  def index
    @title = "Hello Ruby"
    render :index, formats: [:json]
  end
end

There's not much code to implement this as it's mostly glue between Rails and this library (along with some extra metadata stuff that sits alongside blocks in the response payload). The biggest maintenance cost with this would be keeping up with and testing against new Rails versions to ensure broad support there.

Would this be worth including in this library? Would it be better to keep it separate and maybe throw a link to that library?

Docs: https://api.slack.com/reference/block-kit/block-elements#datetimepicker

Implement:

• Slack::BlockKit::Elements::DateTimePicker
• Slack::BlockKit::Layout::Input#date_time_picker

November 2021 Slack Changelog includes an additional focus_on_load parameter.

We should add support to these blocks for this parameter:

• Checkbox groups
• Date picker element
• Multi-select menu element
  • Static
  • External
  • User list
  • Conversations list
  • Public channels list
• Plain-text input element
• Radio button group element
• Select menu element
  • Static
  • External
  • User list
  • Conversations list
  • Public channels list
• Time picker element

I saw that slack blockit support number input but can not find it in this gem

Docs: https://api.slack.com/reference/block-kit/block-elements#email

Implement:

• Slack::BlockKit::Elements::EmailTextInput
• Slack::BlockKit::Layout::Input#email_text_input

Slack has added multi-select menus. We should add support for them as new objects:

• Slack::BlockKit::Elements::MultiConversationsSelect
• Slack::BlockKit::Elements::MultiChannelsSelect
• Slack::BlockKit::Elements::MultiUsersSelect
• Slack::BlockKit::Elements::MultiStaticSelect
• Slack::BlockKit::Elements::MultiExternalSelect

https://api.slack.com/reference/block-kit/block-elements#conversation_multi_select

I think it might be interesting to add an initial: keyword to #option. i.e.

      instance.checkbox_group(action_id: '__ACTION_ID__') do |checkboxes|
        checkboxes.option(value: '__VALUE__', text: '__TEXT__', initial: true)
      end

Having looked at #46 I think if we go with adding initial: we can remove the initial: from the initializers that are currently there.

We might also think about removing the #initial methods at that point -- I can't think of a use case for them anymore if we have initial: available on #option.

Originally posted by @CGA1123 in #44 (comment)

Add support for Radio button group element

https://api.slack.com/reference/block-kit/block-elements#radio

Add support for Checkbox group element
https://api.slack.com/reference/block-kit/block-elements#checkboxes

The current interface is a bit cumbersome, and ugly, leading to code like this 😖 :

title_text = Slack::BlockKit::Composition::Text.markdown(text: "title")
status_text = Slack::BlockKit::Composition::Text.markdown(text: "hungry")
time_text = Slack::BlockKit::Composition::Text.markdown(text: "noon")

blocks = []

blocks << Slack::BlockKit::Layout::Section.new(
  text: title_text,
  fields: [status_text, time_text]
)

blocks << Slack::BlockKit::Layout::Context.new(
  elements: [....]
)

blocks.map(&:as_json)

would be nice to have something like:

blocks = Slack::BlockKit.blocks do |blocks|
  blocks.section do |section|
    section.title('title')
    section.elements do |elements|
      ....
    end
  end
end

blocks.as_json

Probably what would be nice to add:

• Slack::BlockKit.blocks

• Slack::BlockKit::Blocks

• Slack::BlockKit::Blocks#as_json

• Slack::BlockKit::Blocks#append

• Slack::BlockKit::Blocks#section

• Slack::BlockKit::Blocks#divider

• Slack::BlockKit::Blocks#image

• Slack::BlockKit::Blocks#context

• Slack::BlockKit::Layout::Section#title

• Slack::BlockKit::Layout::Section#append

In looking to replace our internal BlockKit implementation with this one, something that came up is that we'd lose the support we built for enforcing Slack's BlockKit limits on text fields and number of elements in various blocks.

Is this support that you'd be interested in accepting a pull request for? Do you have thoughts about how this should be implemented in this library?

https://api.slack.com/reference/block-kit/blocks#header

Add a block object for this and an associated helper in Slack::BlockKit::Block.header

I'm trying to add a timepicker as an input to blocks section, however, there's nothing in the input layout to yield as a timepicker

Docs: https://api.slack.com/reference/block-kit/block-elements#url

Implement:

• Slack::BlockKit::Elements::UrlTextInput
• Slack::BlockKit::Layout::Input#url_text_input

Add Slack::BlockKit.{message,modal,home} helper methods.

Collectively these are known as 'surfaces' in slack terminology

https://api.slack.com/surfaces

Slack created a new block for embedding videos

https://api.slack.com/reference/block-kit/blocks#video

Looks like the library allows Composition::Option objects to be created with a description parameter (ref), but several input types are missing the ability to do so:

• StaticSelect
• MultiStaticSelect
• RadioButtons

While some others include it:

• Checkboxes

Happy to take care of this just wanted to put an issue up in case there was more context.

Add the ability to filter which converstations are shown when using Slack::BlockKit::Element::ConversationsSelect.

https://api.slack.com/reference/block-kit/composition-objects#filter_conversations

@CGA1123 Either this is a bug or Slack actually allows singular version of the attribute.

• MultiExternalSelect

  slack-ruby-block-kit/lib/slack/block_kit/element/multi_external_select.rb

  Line 52 in 371f2f2

  initial_option: @initial_option&.as_json,

  • https://api.slack.com/reference/block-kit/block-elements#external_multi_select__fields
• MultiStaticSelect

  slack-ruby-block-kit/lib/slack/block_kit/element/multi_static_select.rb

  Line 80 in 371f2f2

  initial_option: @initial_option&.as_json,

  • https://api.slack.com/reference/block-kit/block-elements#static_multi_select__fields

Coming from slack-ruby/slack-ruby-client#316.

Any interest in having slack_block_kit-ruby be part of the slack-ruby org?

Potentially after renaming to slack-ruby-block-kit to be consistent? Not a must have ;)

According to: https://api.slack.com/surfaces/modals/using#modal_response_url, blocks can pass through response_url_enabled to get a response_url which enables best practice usage of ephemeral messages. This seems like a basic adding and passing of a parameter in:

• Slack::BlockKit::Element::ConversationsSelect#initialize
• Slack::BlockKit::Element::ConversationsSelect#as_json
• Slack::BlockKit::Layout::Input#conversation_select

Happy to submit a PR.

Slack has added a date picker! https://api.slack.com/reference/block-kit/block-elements#datepicker

Would be good to add this as an element Slack::BlockKit::Element::DatePicker.