Rocket.Chat Apps CLI

The Rocket.Chat Apps CLI for interacting with Apps.

Getting Started

Extremely simple.

npm install -g @rocket.chat/apps-cli

Rocket.Chat App Development

Logging Inside an App

Due to limitations of NodeJS's vm package we have had to implement a custom logger class. To make usage of this you can use this.getLogger() and then do the normal console style logging.

rc-apps create

The development tools provide a command to quickly scaffold a new Rocket.Chat App, simply run rc-apps create and a new folder will be created inside the current working directory with a basic App which does nothing but will compile and be packaged in the dist folder.

App description

The app description file, named app.json, contains basic information about the app. You can check the app-schema.json file for all the detailed information and fields allowed in the app description file, the basic structure is similar to this:

{
    "id": "5cb9a329-0613-4d39-b20f-cc2cc9175df5",
    "name": "App Name",
    "nameSlug": "app-name",
    "version": "0.0.1",
    "requiredApiVersion": "^1.4.0",
    "description": "App which provides something very useful for Rocket.Chat users.",
    "author": {
        "name": "Author Name <[email protected]>",
        "support": "Support Url or Email"
    },
    "classFile": "main.ts",
    "iconFile": "beautiful-app-icon.jpg"
}

Extending the App class

The basic creation of an App is based on extending the App class from the Rocket.Chat Apps definition library. Your class also has to implement the constructor and optionally the initialize function, for more details on those check the App definition documentation.

import {
    IAppAccessors,
    IConfigurationExtend,
    IEnvironmentRead,
    ILogger,
} from '@rocket.chat/apps-engine/definition/accessors';
import { App } from '@rocket.chat/apps-engine/definition/App';
import { IAppInfo } from '@rocket.chat/apps-engine/definition/metadata';

export class TodoListApp extends App {
    constructor(info: IAppInfo, logger: ILogger, accessors: IAppAccessors) {
        super(info, logger, accessors);
    }

    public async initialize(configurationExtend: IConfigurationExtend, environmentRead: IEnvironmentRead): Promise<void> {
        await this.extendConfiguration(configurationExtend, environmentRead);
        this.getLogger().log('Hello world from my app');
    }
}

Packaging the app

Currently the Rocket.Chat servers and Marketplace allow submission of zip files, these files can be created by running rc-apps package which packages your app and creates the zip file under dist folder.

Uploading the app

For uploading the app you need add to the required parameters in the .rcappsconfig already created in the apps directory. It accepts two types of objects:-

1. Upload using username, password

{
    url: string;
    username: string;
    password: string;
}

2. Upload using personal access token and userId

{
    url: string;
    userId: string;
    token: string;
}

Enabling autocomplete for commands

To enable autocomplete for the apps cli use the command rc-apps autocomplete <your-shell-type> with the shell type as zsh or bash as the supported types. This would provide a step by step instruction to enable shell completion in your preferred shell.