Slack

Slack is a messaging platform for teams and organizations where they can collaborate, share ideas and information.

ingestr supports Slack as a source.

URI format

The URI format for Slack is as follows:

slack://?api_key=<api-key-here>

URI parameters:

• api_key: The API key used for authentication with the Slack API.

The URI is used to connect to the Slack API for extracting data.

Setting up a Slack integration

To set up a Slack integration, you need to create a Slack App and obtain an API token with the necessary permissions.

Step 1: Create a Slack App

1. Go to Slack API Apps page
2. Click Create New App
3. Choose From scratch
4. Enter an App Name (e.g., "Data Integration") and select your workspace
5. Click Create App

Step 2: Choose a Token Type

Slack supports two token types, and ingestr works with either:

• User token (xoxp-) — recommended for one-off ingestion by an admin. Inherits the installing user's channel access, so no per-channel setup is needed.
• Bot token (xoxb-) — recommended for unattended, long-running pipelines. The bot must be invited to each channel you want to read messages from (/invite @your-app in each channel).

Step 3: Configure OAuth Scopes

1. In the left sidebar, click OAuth & Permissions
2. Scroll down to Scopes and add the scopes below under User Token Scopes or Bot Token Scopes, matching the token type you chose in Step 2:
   • channels:read — list public channels
   • channels:history — read messages in public channels
   • users:read — list workspace users
   • team:read — read team metadata
   • admin.teams:read — required for access_logs (Enterprise Grid only)

Step 4: Install the App and Get the Token

1. Scroll to the top of the OAuth & Permissions page
2. Click Install to Workspace and approve the requested permissions
3. Copy the token that matches your choice in Step 2:
   • User OAuth Token (xoxp-…), or
   • Bot User OAuth Token (xoxb-…)

This token is your api_key for the ingestr URI.

Once you have the API key, let's say it is axb-test-564, here's a sample command that will copy the data from Slack into a DuckDB database:

ingestr ingest --source-uri 'slack://?api_key=axb-test-564' --source-table 'channels' --dest-uri duckdb:///slack.duckdb --dest-table 'dest.channels'

The result of this command will be a table in the slack.duckdb database.

Tables

Slack source allows ingesting the following sources into separate tables:

Table	PK	Inc Key	Inc Strategy	Details
channels	id	-	replace	Retrieves information about all the channels
users	id	-	replace	Retrieves all the users
messages:chan1,chan2	ts	ts	append/merge	Retrieves messages from specified channels (e.g., general, memes). Multiple channels can be listed separated by commas
access_logs	user_id	-	append	Retrieves access logs

Use these as --source-table parameter in the ingestr ingest command.