Jeb Bush-Themed Slack Doorbells: A Memoir
Tl;dr - we built a Slack integration! Check out our knowledge base for more info.
One of my earliest deep-dives into API documentation was with Slack's API a few years ago. I built a doorbell for my house where every time a visitor pressed it, the lights in our front living room would turn on and "Bouncer Jeb Bush" would notify us in our house Slack that someone was at the door.
Disclaimer: the reason that this doorbell was Jeb Bush-themed was not because of his politics, but because he is so publicly not his mother's favorite son and I found it so profoundly sad and hilarious at the time that I felt it deserved a tribute.
Thanks to the combination of the Minnesota winter and the not-so-weatherproof Amazon Dash button I used (RIP), the "doorbell" was pretty sporadic right off the bat and stopped working entirely after a few weeks. Eventually I accepted defeat, took Bouncer Jeb offline, and encouraged visitors to knock instead.
As sad as Bouncer Jeb's downfall was, it was so enjoyable to go through that process of peeling through the documentation, constructing that first API request, and eventually making it into a (somewhat-functioning) doorbell for my roommates.
That experience eventually led me to my current job — working on a product that seeks to democratize this process of interacting with APIs for everyone! With Slack being such a leader in this space, it feels obligatory (and maybe overdue) that we build a Slack integration of our own 🎉
Simply click the Add to Slack button in your Project Integrations settings in ReadMe (Configuration > Integrations) and you'll instantly set up notifications in your Slack workspace for the following:
- Suggested Edits: when someone suggests new edits to your project
- Discussions/Support Forums: when someone asks a question in your project's Support Forums
For the latest information on setting this up and configuring it, please see our knowledge base. We plan on adding more types of notifications in the future, so stay tuned!