best-queue

A self-hosted substitute for Queue.

Project milestones:

1. Application ✅
2. Docker config for an easily deployable image ✅
3. Automated Github Actions workflows to build, tag and push docker images to dockerhub ✅
4. Support for exporting and importing state ✅
5. Periodic backup of in-memory state to persistent storage ✅

Example usage:

Joining

Most commands support custom queues to be specified as a parameter. Not specifying one defaults to this channel's unique ID. This means you can use multiple queues in the same channel (or one queue across multiple channels!) by specifying /qjoin emea, /qleave emea, etc.

Showing & swapping

Kicking

Exporting and importing state

Exporting and importing state requires a password to be provided, to avoid misuse or accidental execution. If provided, a JSON-blob corresponding to the application's full memory contents is exported, ready to be imported after an application restart or upgrade.

Usage:

• /qexportstate secret-password
• /qimportstate secret-password {"queues":{"#C07BM6F [...full exported json...] }}

Period backup of state

The application dumps its internal state to the docker volume every hour, which it attempts importing on application startup. This makes the application resilient across restarts, outages or image upgrades.

Setting up and running the application

Deploy the back-end application

Option 1 - using docker

1. Run docker-compose up. The latest image will be pulled and the application starts accepting requests at localhost:8080.

Option 2 - run with python

1. Clone this repository, and start the flask application on port 8080 using python3 app.py. If you are missing flask, install it using pip3 install flask.
2. (Optional, for testing locally) Install ngrok and add your authtoken. Start your ngrok instance using ngrok http http://localhost:8080 (swap the port if 8080 is occupied), and save your forwarding url (should look something like https://5d71-111-1-243-109.ngrok-free.app) for use in the slack app configuration.

Create the slack app and set up the required slash commands

1. Go to the slack apps page
2. Create a new app -> From scratch
3. When asked for Add features and functionality, activate Slash commands and Bots
4. In your slack apps page, go to Slash commands, and create one for each of the endpoints /qjoin, /qleave,/qshow, etc. In the Request URL field, enter your backend host's url as the base. /qjoin Examples: https://5d71-111-1-243-109.ngrok-free.app/qjoin or https://best-queue.my-home-server.com/qjoin.

5. Install your app in your slack workspace of choice. This is done on the home page of your slack app -> Install your app -> Install in workspace

Use the commands in any text channel in your slack workspace - the queue app should work! ⭐