Gathering Requirements#

Since we’re doing some destructive operations, we’ll need to make sure our Slack user has the appropriate permissions to manage emoji; adding & deleting. This means using a different section of the Slack interface which uses an entirely seperate set of API endpoints.

You’ll still be using the following, which can be found using instructions from the previous article:

• An API request token.
• A session cookie.
• A workspace, or team, id.

In addition, you will need your workspaces’s subdomain, or URL. This can easily be found within the Slack app itself:

Testing Your Findings#

This is an incredibly straight-forward process as it’s quite similar to what we already know. The primary difference is this is a multipart/form-data upload. So, instead of shipping of a JSON payload, it’s a form with associated fields.

With the information gathered above, you can upload directly to Slack using a simple cURL command like so:

curl -s --compressed "https://<domain>.slack.com/api/emoji.add" \
  -H 'content-type: multipart/form-data' \
  -H "cookie: d=<cookie>;" \
  -F "token=<token>" \
  -F "name=<name>" \
  -F mode=data \
  -F "image=@<local-emoji-path>"

Replace the following:

• <domain> is your workspace’s, or team’s, private URL.
• <cookie> is your session cookie value.
• <token> is your request token.
• <name> will be the named reference of your new emoji.
• <path> is the relative, or absolute, local path of your emoji file to upload.

The JSON response to this request will have the following structure if all goes well:

{ "ok": true }

And, if something went wrong:

{ 
	"ok": false,
	"error": "err_code"
}

That’s it! Now that we know how to upload from the command line.

The Implementation#

If you’re only uploading a handful of emojis, it might make sense to just do it via Slack’s UI. However, this can get a bit tedious if you have dozens, or even hundreds, to upload. We can automate things even further by:

• Gathering all supported images from a specific source directory.
• Iterating through our findings and bulk-upload them all in one go.

So, let’s do just that. But, first, let’s set up some environmental variables so we can easily configure out script:

: ${SLACK_COOKIE:=}
: ${SLACK_TOKEN:=}
: ${SLACK_DOMAIN:=}

Slack only supports png, gif and jpg image formats, so lets see what we can find from our present working directory:

files=$(find . -iname \*.gif -o -iname \*.png -o -iname \*.png -maxdepth 1)
[[ "${files}" == "" ]] && exit 0

Exit if we can’t find any results. No need to continue if we haven’t a thing to upload.

Next, we just iterate through our findings using read and some more Bash parameter expansion to determine what will be the new emoji’s reference name:

echo "${files}" | while read -r path; do 
  name=$(basename "${path%.*}")
done

We can easily parse the response bodies with jq for some error checking and we’re good to go:

if [[ $(echo "${result}" | jq -r ".ok") == false ]]; then
  echo "${result}" | jq -r ".error"
  exit 1
fi

We now have all the information we need to upload each file in bulk. Put it all together and you’ve got a working bulk emoji uploader:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

set -eo pipefail

: ${SLACK_COOKIE:=}
: ${SLACK_TOKEN:=}
: ${SLACK_DOMAIN:=}

files=$(find . -iname \*.gif -o -iname \*.png -o -iname \*.png -maxdepth 1)
[[ "${files}" == "" ]] && exit 1

echo "${files}" | while read -r path; do 
  name=$(basename "${path%.*}")

  result=$(
    curl -s --compressed "https://${SLACK_DOMAIN}.slack.com/api/emoji.add" \
      -H 'content-type: multipart/form-data' \
      -H "cookie: d=${SLACK_COOKIE};" \
      -F "token=${SLACK_TOKEN}" \
      -F "name=${name}" \
      -F mode=data \
      -F "image=@${path}" 
  )

  if [[ $(echo "${result}" | jq -r ".ok") == false ]]; then
    echo "${result}" | jq -r ".error"
    exit 1
  fi

  echo "uploaded :${name}:!"
done

There you go! To test it out yourself, save this as an executable script and make sure your present working directory has some supported images in it. Pass through the your environmental variables when executing and you’re off:

$ SLACK_DOMAIN=*** SLACK_COOKIE=*** SLACK_TOKEN=*** ./upload.sh
uploaded :stonks:!
uploaded :boop:!
uploaded :derp:!
uploaded :booyah:!
uploaded :merp-flakes:!

Nice! 😊

Once Again, Something Better!#

While perfectly functional, there’s not a lot of flexibility. No error checking, filtering or confirmation checks. If you’re looking for something a bit more fleshed out, look no further!

The Final Piece …#

So far, we’ve gone over how to download and upload large sets of emoji, but what if you want to nuke them from orbit? The final article in this series will cover how to bulk delete while using advanced filters to pin-point specific sets of emoji you wish to remove.

Hope you’ve learned something useful!