This autumn, Slack will make what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) editing available to users.
Once we release WYSIWYG editing, the text field found in message objects your app encounters will become an approximation of a user's more richly formatted message.
To capture a message's full nuance and vibrancy, your app may look to the new blocks attribute included with such messages.
Users will compose and decorate their messages with a user interface that allows bolding, italics, and visual style only accomplishable with arcane symbols today.
Messages authored by users and sent to your app via APIs like Events API, chat.postMessage, and conversations.history will expand to more fully capture user intent.
The text field will continue to contain a textual and markup-laden representation of the user's typed message.
For example, just as today you might find a message like: This is a *rich text *message that uses _italics and _~strikethrough ~and looks :sparkles: _*fabulous*_ :sparkles:. As before, the text field is not an exact representation of what a user typed... Slack will still process message markup and expand or contract aspects like "user mentions." This is going to be the most readable version of the user's message.
The blocks field will contain specific Block Kit "blocks" that make up the various kinds of markup available to users. Parsing these blocks will require some custom programming on your part β it's not possible for developers to build messages using these rich text blocks.
This example demonstrates that same message, now verbosely containing WYSIWYG-authored content under the blocks attribute.
{
"client_msg_id": "70c82df9-9db9-48b0-bf4e-9c43db3ed097",
"type": "message",
"text": "This is a *rich text *message that uses _italics and _~strikethrough ~and looks :sparkles: _*fabulous*_ :sparkles:",
"user": "U0JD3BPNC",
"ts": "1565629075.001000",
"team": "T0JD3BPMW",
"blocks": [
{
"type": "rich_text",
"block_id": "hUBz",
"elements": [
{
"type": "rich_text_section",
"elements": [
{
"type": "text",
"text": "This is a "
},
{
"type": "text",
"text": "rich text ",
"style": {
"bold": true
}
},
{
"type": "text",
"text": "message that uses "
},
{
"type": "text",
"text": "italics and ",
"style": {
"italic": true
}
},
{
"type": "text",
"text": "strikethrough ",
"style": {
"strike": true
}
},
{
"type": "text",
"text": "and looks "
},
{
"type": "emoji",
"name": "sparkles"
},
{
"type": "text",
"text": " "
},
{
"type": "text",
"text": "fabulous",
"style": {
"bold": true,
"italic": true
}
},
{
"type": "text",
"text": " "
},
{
"type": "emoji",
"name": "sparkles"
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
Here are some elements you might find in the rich_text_section of a message sent to your app. Expect to encounter other (even undocumented) elements.
Each element is identified by a type described below:
text - the words and puncuation a user typed. You'll frequently find style attributes paired with this element.channel - a message element for formatting channel mentions just so.user - a mention of a user, named by user_id and potentially with style and pizzazz.emoji - an emoji! will contain a name attribute naming the emoji, either from the Slack stock set or those custom and found in emoji.list.link - a link to a far off or inner place, with a url and sometimes text and/or style.team - a mention of a specific workspace/team; includes a team_id and can have style.usergroup - a mention of a user group by usergroup_id, like a macro to reach many users!date - date and time formatted logically and tidily for humans to read. We guarantee we'll include an epoch timestamp attribute.broadcast - used for "macro mentions" like @channel, @everyone, and @hereElements with style will contain an object with these named booleans. A true value indicates that the element is to be visually displayed in that style.
bold - strong text, thicker fonts, with an intended heavy impact on the readeritalic - the text has a decidedly angular emphasis, often used to express motion or a softness of voicestrike - the text will have a line through it, typically used to express an idea that's no longer true but still relevant to the timelinecode - a bit of programmer's magic or text presented in monospace fontMessages are still messages. These ones are still written by users. You'll still find the essence of their communication in the text field of message objects.
If you don't consume the text field of messages, you don't need to do anything.
If you do use the text field, you can keep using it! You won't notice many differences in how typical Slack mark up is generated. Messages will still look like messages.
If your app is after the whole message in all its formal verbosity, you'll want to look to the blocks field to understand the many formatting choices chosen by workspace conversationalists.
This autumn, we plan to announce that we're gradually rolling WYSIWYG features out to workspaces. Once that happens, users will begin composing their messages and rich text blocks will tag along everywhere their message objects go.