robot.brain.users is empty

[cesarvarela]

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Description

Running the https://www.npmjs.com/package/hubot-brain-inspect script shows that the users array is empty.

Reproducible in:

latest hubot-slack v4.0.2 deployed to Heroku

Expected result:

a list of users

Actual result:

{ users: {}, _private: {}, ambushes: {} }

Locally seems to be working:

robo> { users: { '1': User { id: '1', name: 'Shell', room: 'Shell' } }, _private: {} }

[mose]

I have the feeling this is a deliberate design. All the user object is fed by slack, updated on slack, and anything stored in brain for user would be subject to split-brain syndrome (like name change in slack and not in brain).

The issue I see is that there are various plugins that rely on existence of user in the brain for storing user extra information. There seem to be a trend towards considering this a bad practice.

But I wonder how realistic it is to expect all plugins to 'behave'. Maybe we could think of a hubot-slack-users new plugin that would ensure some compatibility and keep minimal user information in the brain, at least to have an object with an id ?

[telemaco]

i've the same problem. Any workarround? This bug (or design decission) brokes hubot-auth and other modules that depends of it.

[UncannyBingo]

This might be a bug, but it is unclear if we can do a whole lot about it, given the way the RTM API works. Might take a fair amount of work, but we should investigate this for sure!

[telemaco]

I think the problem is that this code has been removed. is it posible to restore it using RTM API?