Delete Messages

Learn to use Slack API calls to delete messages.

We'll cover the following

In this lesson, we’ll learn to delete regular and scheduled messages in Slack.

Let’s look at the following endpoints in this lesson:

  1. chat.delete: This endpoint deletes a message.
  2. chat.deleteScheduledMessage: This endpoint deletes a scheduled message.

Delete a message

To delete a message, we access the https://slack.com/api/chat.delete endpoint. We’ll pass a message’s timestamp, ts, as a parameter to delete a message. We can use the chat.postMessage endpoint to send a message and receive the timestamp ts as a response.

Request parameters

Some important query parameters for the chat.delete endpoint are as follows:

Parameter

Type

Category

Description

token

token

required

Authentication tokens carry the required scopes that govern the usage of different Slack applications and APIs. We usually pass these tokens as an HTTP Authorization header or as a POST parameter.

channel

string

required

This parameter specifies the channel to which the message will be posted. It can be a public channel, a private group, or an IM channel (direct message). The value for this parameter can either be an encoded ID or a name of a channel.

ts

string

required

This specifies the timestamp of the message that needs to be deleted.

Let’s call the chat.delete endpoint. Click the “Run” button to send a message to the channel, and delete the same message after ten seconds. Open Slack to see the message before it gets deleted. Once the code widget has completed execution, the message will already have been deleted.

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import fetch from "node-fetch";
const url = "https://slack.com/api/chat.delete";
const headerParameters = {
  Authorization: "Bearer {{TOKEN}}",
  "Content-Type": "application/json; charset=UTF-8",
};
// Defining a function to delete the message
async function deleteMessage() {
  try {
    // Sending a message and retrieving its timestamp
    const timestamp = await sendMessage();
    await sleep(10000); // Using a custom sleep function to sleep for 10 seconds
    const bodyParameters = JSON.stringify({
      channel: "{{CHANNEL_ID}}",
      ts: timestamp,
    });
    const options = {
      method: "POST",
      headers: headerParameters,
      body: bodyParameters,
    };
    const response = await fetch(url, options);
    printResponse(response);
  } catch (error) {
    printError(error);
  }
}
deleteMessage();

Let’s look at the highlighted lines in the code widget shown above:

  • Line 14: We post a message to the channel and retrieve its timestamp.
  • Line 15: We use a custom sleep function to halt execution for ten seconds.
  • Lines 17–20: We define the request body, including the ts parameter.
  • Line 28: We make a call to the chat.delete endpoint to delete the posted message.

Response fields

A successful response from this endpoint contains the following fields:

Property

Type

Description

ok

boolean

A boolean value indicating whether the request was successful or not.

channel

string

The channel from where the message was deleted.

ts

string

The Unix timestamp of the deleted message.

Delete a scheduled message

To delete a scheduled message, we access the https://slack.com/api/chat.deleteScheduledMessage endpoint. The chat.deleteScheduledMessage endpoint won’t require the message timestamp, ts. Instead, we’ll send the message id of the scheduled message as the scheduled_message_id parameter. There are two ways to get the scheduled_message_id parameter. The first is to save the ID from the response of the chat.ScheduledMessage request. The second is to call the chat.scheduledMessages.list endpoint and save the id.

Note: As of now, the chat.deleteScheduledMessage can only delete messages that are not due in less than five minutes.

Request parameters

Some important query parameters for the chat.deleteScheduledMessage endpoint are as follows:

Parameter

Type

Category

Description

token

token

required

Authentication tokens carry the required scopes that govern the usage of different Slack applications and APIs. We usually pass these tokens as an HTTP Authorization header or as a POST parameter.

channel

string

required

This parameter specifies the channel to which the message will be posted. It can be a public channel, a private group, or an IM channel (direct message). The value for this parameter can either be an encoded ID or a name of a channel.

scheduled_message_id

string

required

This is the ID returned when a scheduled message is posted.

Let’s call the chat.deleteScheduledMessage endpoint. Click the “Run” button to schedule a new message in the first request and delete the scheduled message using the second request.

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import fetch from "node-fetch";
const url = "https://slack.com/api/chat.deleteScheduledMessage";
const headerParameters = {
  Authorization: "Bearer {{TOKEN}}",
  "Content-Type": "application/json; charset=UTF-8",
};
// Defining a function to delete the message
async function deleteScheduledMessage() {
  try {
    // Scheduling a message for 6 minutes later
    let message = "Hello World! In 6 minutes";
    let minutes = 6;
    const messageId = await scheduleMessage(message, minutes);
    const bodyParameters = JSON.stringify({
      channel: "{{CHANNEL_ID}}",
      scheduled_message_id: messageId,
    });
    const options = {
      method: "POST",
      headers: headerParameters,
      body: bodyParameters,
    };
    const response = await fetch(url, options);
    printResponse(response);
  } catch (error) {
    printError(error);
  }
}
deleteScheduledMessage();

Let’s look at the highlighted lines in the code widget shown above:

  • Lines 14–16: We schedule a message for six minutes in the future and retrieve its ID.
  • Lines 18–21: We define the request body, including the scheduled_message_id parameter.
  • Line 29: We make a call to the chat.deleteScheduledMessage endpoint.

Response fields

The response from this endpoint contains only the ok field, indicating whether the deletion was successful.