Pipe Slack Data to CSV in PowerShell

The CData Cmdlets Module for Slack is a standard PowerShell module offering straightforward integration with Slack. Below, you will find examples of using our Slack Cmdlets with native PowerShell cmdlets.

Creating a Connection to Your Slack Data

Slack uses the OAuth authentication standard. To authenticate using OAuth, you will need to create an app to obtain the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL connection properties. See the Getting Started section of the help documentation for an authentication guide.

$conn = Connect-Slack  -OAuthClientId "$OAuthClientId" -OAuthClientSecret "$OAuthClientSecret" -CallbackURL "$CallbackURL"

Selecting Data

Follow the steps below to retrieve data from the Channels table and pipe the result into to a CSV file:

Select-Slack -Connection $conn -Table Channels | Select -Property * -ExcludeProperty Connection,Table,Columns | Export-Csv -Path c:\myChannelsData.csv -NoTypeInformation

You will notice that we piped the results from Select-Slack into a Select-Object cmdlet and excluded some properties before piping them into an Export-Csv cmdlet. We do this because the CData Cmdlets append Connection, Table, and Columns information onto each "row" in the result set, and we do not necessarily want that information in our CSV file.

Deleting Data

The following line deletes any records that match the criteria:

Select-Slack -Connection $conn -Table Channels -Where "IsPublic = True" | Remove-Slack

Inserting and Updating Data

The cmdlets make data transformation easy as well as data cleansing. The following example loads data from a CSV file into Slack, checking first whether a record already exists and needs to be updated instead of inserted.

Import-Csv -Path C:\MyChannelsUpdates.csv | %{
  $record = Select-Slack -Connection $Slack -Table Channels -Where ("Id = `'"+$_.Id+"`'")
  if($record){
    Update-Slack -Connection $slack -Table Channels -Columns ("Id","Name") -Values ($_.Id, $_.Name) -Where ("Id = `'"+$_.Id+"`'")
  }else{
    Add-Slack -Connection $slack -Table Channels -Columns ("Id","Name") -Values ($_.Id, $_.Name)
  }
}

As always, our goal is to simplify the way you connect to data. With cmdlets users can install a data module, set the connection properties, and start building. Download Cmdlets and start working with your data in PowerShell today!