Using a regex pattern to match an action id handler

[stokedout]

I have some code that generates a list of questions, I want the user to click a button that corresponds to the numbered question. To do that I needed a dynamic action pattern @app.action(r"^ask_previous_query_\d+$"). It appears like the SDK supports it but it's not working, i.e. I get:

[2025-08-08 12:20:03] slack_bolt.App WARNING Unhandled request ({'type': 'block_actions', 'block_id': 'pVhre', 'action_id': 'ask_previous_query_145'})
---
[Suggestion] You can handle this type of event with the following listener function:

@app.action("ask_previous_query_145")
def handle_some_action(ack, body, logger):
    ack()
    logger.info(body)

Any suggestions? I've also tried with no joy

@app.action(r"^ask_previous_query_")
@app.action(r"^ask_previous_query")
@app.action("ask_previous_query_")
@app.action("ask_previous_query_*")

Reproducible in:

pip freeze | grep slack
python --version
sw_vers && uname -v # or `ver`

The slack_bolt version

From poetry.lock

[[package]]
name = "slack-bolt"
version = "1.21.2"
description = "The Bolt Framework for Python"
optional = false
python-versions = ">=3.6"
groups = ["main"]
markers = "python_version == \"3.12\" or python_version >= \"3.13\""
files = [
    {file = "slack_bolt-1.21.2-py2.py3-none-any.whl", hash = "sha256:6860fc8693ca543b653c5d49a09b8b542f5fb7a02638342a7ddd18d8bc6f3ba0"},
    {file = "slack_bolt-1.21.2.tar.gz", hash = "sha256:05ac2d454adfddfc629fb63c7a3723bd1432a24373119368bc81f2f52b029cbf"},
]

Python runtime version

3.11.6

OS info

ProductName: macOS
ProductVersion: 15.5
BuildVersion: 24F74
Darwin Kernel Version 24.5.0: Tue Apr 22 19:54:26 PDT 2025; root:xnu-11417.121.6~2/RELEASE_ARM64_T8112

Steps to reproduce:

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Expected result:

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Actual result:

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Requirements

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[hello-ashleyintech]

Hi, @stokedout! Thank you for submitting this issue.

Looking at the documentation for other app listeners like the message listener, it seems that it suggests using the re library so that you can use the re.compile() function for your RegEx. Example:

import re

@app.message(re.compile("(hi|hello|hey)"))
def say_hello_regex(say, context):
    # regular expression matches are inside of context.matches
    greeting = context['matches'][0]
    say(f"{greeting}, how are you?")

Can you try this and see if it works for you in the action listener?

[sam57719]

Hi @stokedout ,

I currently do the following in my app!

@app.action(re.compile('app_home_url_.*'))
async def handle_app_home_url_clicks(ack: AsyncAck):
    await ack()

And that seems to work!

[github-actions]

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