f1-slack-stack

A scheduled lambda that posts next F1 race information into a configured Slack channel.

How It Works

This application functions as a bot that will parse a bunch of Formula 1 race information to determine if an upcoming race is upon us.

There is a set of data that is embedded (events.json) that is used to determine the race calendar for the season. This data is parsed from an amazing site that you should check out: https://lightsouts.com/formula-1.

By default, the Lambda will run every week on Monday to see if there is a race in the next 7 days. If a race is found, it will submit the information about the race into the Slack channel that you have configured.

That's it! Enjoy! ❤️

Deploy

This application uses AWS SAM to package, build and deploy this application. Once you have the sam CLI installed, run:

sam build
sam deploy

Configuring Slack

In order to post to slack, you will need to create a Slack application. A basic shell of an app will work just fine.

Once you have that, you can simply create a webhook under the Incoming Webhooks tab. The URL that it gives you is the url that you will need to configure in the SAM template.

To add the environment variable, go to the template.yml in the root of the directory, and update the SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL to the url generated above.

Other Environment Variables

• DISPLAY_TZ - this is the timezone that the data is formatted for (default: America/New York)

Pulling Fresh Data

There is a little script that you can use to pull a fresh version of the event data that is used in the lambda every week. To execute, simply run:

npm run pull-data

This will show you a diff of the latest file and the committed one. Ensure that you want the changes before accepting.

Testing

Build your application by using the sam build command.

sam build

The AWS SAM CLI installs dependencies that are defined in package.json, creates a deployment package, and saves it in the .aws-sam/build folder.

To run the local function:

sam local invoke F1RacePoster --event events/event-cloudwatch-event.json

Unit tests

Tests are defined in the __tests__ folder in this project. Use npm to install the Jest test framework and run unit tests.

npm install
npm run test

Fetch, tail, and filter Lambda function logs

To simplify troubleshooting, the AWS SAM CLI has a command called sam logs. sam logs lets you fetch logs that are generated by your Lambda function from the command line. In addition to printing the logs on the terminal, this command has several nifty features to help you quickly find the bug.

NOTE: This command works for all Lambda functions, not just the ones you deploy using AWS SAM.

sam logs -n F1RacePoster --stack-name sam-app --tail

NOTE: This uses the logical name of the function within the stack. This is the correct name to use when searching logs inside an AWS Lambda function within a CloudFormation stack, even if the deployed function name varies due to CloudFormation's unique resource name generation.

You can find more information and examples about filtering Lambda function logs in the AWS SAM CLI documentation.

Cleanup

To delete the sample application that you created, use the AWS CLI. Assuming you used your project name for the stack name, you can run the following:

sam delete --stack-name f1-slack-stack

Resources

For an introduction to the AWS SAM specification, the AWS SAM CLI, and serverless application concepts, see the AWS SAM Developer Guide.

Next, you can use the AWS Serverless Application Repository to deploy ready-to-use apps that go beyond Hello World samples and learn how authors developed their applications. For more information, see the AWS Serverless Application Repository main page and the AWS Serverless Application Repository Developer Guide.