bug: Unexpected token 'o', "ok" is not valid JSON

[w0rmr1d3r]

Hello and thank you for this action Slack!

Already done a search in both open and closed issues but found none matching my problem. Also looked for open PRs and none fix it either.

When running the GitHub action to notify on failed workflows, as in:

name: Check-Workflow

on:
  workflow_run:
    workflows: ["*"]
    branches: [main]
    types:
      - completed

jobs:
  notify:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest-small
    if: github.event.workflow_run.conclusion == 'failure'
    permissions:
      contents: read
    steps:
      - name: Slack alert for failure on main
        uses: slackapi/slack-github-action@dcb1066f776dd043e64d0e8ba94ca15cc7e1875d # v4.0.1
        with:
          errors: true
          webhook: ${{ secrets.WEBHOOK_URL }}
          webhook-type: webhook-trigger
          payload: |
            text: "valid text"

It fails with the following error: Error: SlackError: A request error occurred: Unexpected token 'o', "ok" is not valid JSON

Full stacktrace is:

Error: SlackError: A request error occurred: Unexpected token 'o', "ok" is not valid JSON

file:///home/runner/_work/_actions/slackapi/slack-github-action/dcb1066f776dd043e64d0e8ba94ca15cc7e1875d/src/webhook.js:57
      throw new SlackError(config.core, err.message);
^
SlackError: A request error occurred: Unexpected token 'o', "ok" is not valid JSON
    at Webhook.post (file:///home/runner/_work/_actions/slackapi/slack-github-action/dcb1066f776dd043e64d0e8ba94ca15cc7e1875d/src/webhook.js:57:1)
    at processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:104:5)
    at post (file:///home/runner/_work/_actions/slackapi/slack-github-action/dcb1066f776dd043e64d0e8ba94ca15cc7e1875d/src/send.js:34:1)
    at send (file:///home/runner/_work/_actions/slackapi/slack-github-action/dcb1066f776dd043e64d0e8ba94ca15cc7e1875d/src/send.js:14:1)
    at file:///home/runner/_work/_actions/slackapi/slack-github-action/dcb1066f776dd043e64d0e8ba94ca15cc7e1875d/src/index.js:9:1
Error: A request error occurred: Unexpected token 'o', "ok" is not valid JSON
SlackError: A request error occurred: Unexpected token 'o', "ok" is not valid JSON
    at Webhook.post (file:///home/runner/_work/_actions/slackapi/slack-github-action/dcb1066f776dd043e64d0e8ba94ca15cc7e1875d/src/webhook.js:57:1)
    at processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:104:5)
    at post (file:///home/runner/_work/_actions/slackapi/slack-github-action/dcb1066f776dd043e64d0e8ba94ca15cc7e1875d/src/send.js:34:1)
    at send (file:///home/runner/_work/_actions/slackapi/slack-github-action/dcb1066f776dd043e64d0e8ba94ca15cc7e1875d/src/send.js:14:1)
    at file:///home/runner/_work/_actions/slackapi/slack-github-action/dcb1066f776dd043e64d0e8ba94ca15cc7e1875d/src/index.js:9:1

Some small research with Claude mentioned the following on why it failed:

1. The Slack action posts to the webhook — Slack actually receives it and responds with ok (plain text).
2. But the action expects JSON back, parses "ok" as JSON → Unexpected token 'o', "ok" is not valid JSON.

Hope this is enough context 🤞

Thank you

[zimeg]

👋 Hey @w0rmr1d3r! Thanks for sending this in! It might be related to #654 which we're hoping to address next release too 👾

A current suggestion might be to switch the webhook-type to match "incoming-webhook" for channel messages. If "text" is input to a Slack Workflow please do let me know:

- webhook-type: webhook-trigger
+ webhook-type: incoming-webhook

Otherwise I'm hoping this is from an unexpected response shape for the request which we're addressing upstream with both:

• fix(webhook): do not retry after a successful trigger delivery node-slack-sdk#2674
• feat(webhook): warn when URL pattern mismatches webhook class node-slack-sdk#2688

[w0rmr1d3r]

hi @zimeg 👋

Checking #654 I'd say it's not related to that.
But checking slackapi/node-slack-sdk#2674 seems to be right with the test 'should resolve to { ok: true } on a non-JSON 2xx body', which is exactly the behaviour we are seeing at the moment.

For now, we are forcing the retries to be 0, instead of the default 5 to avoid duplicated messages.

Any timeline for next release including that fix?

Thank you in advance