How to set $elements values in Laravel Slack notification block classes

[sedwardsgt]

I am converting a Laravel app from using Nathanhelfley/laravel-slack-blocks to using the built in Illuminate\Notifications\Slack\BlockKit\Blocks blocks, and I can't figure out how to pass in the $elements value. For instance, with a SlackBlock class, I would do this for a context block;

        $block->elements([
            [
                'type' => 'mrkdwn',
                'text' => "Pursuit: *{$this->activityModel->target->name}*",
            ],
        ]);

However, with the ContextBlock class, there is no interface to pass in the entire element (e.g. type => markdown) because there is no setter for $elements and it is protected. The same is true for the other block types. How do I pass in the other values for a block other than the text and the id?

Per one suggestion, the correct implementation is something like this

$contextBlock = new ContextBlock();
$contextBlock->text(new MarkdownText("Pursuit: *{$this->activityModel->target->name}*"));
Add the block to your Slack message:
use Illuminate\Notifications\Slack\SlackMessage;

$slackMessage = (new SlackMessage)
    ->blocks(function ($block) use ($contextBlock) {
        $block->context($contextBlock);
    });

But there are two problems

• The MarkdownText class doesn't exist
• the TextObject class does, and it has a markdown() setter. However, the text() method takes a string, not an object.

Something like this doesn't work, for the same reason

        $block = new ContextBlock();

        $text_block = new TextObject("Pursuit: *{'My pursuit text}*");
        $text_block->markdown();

        $block->text($text_block);

But it's not just the markdown property. If you look at the doc block for the $elements property in ActionsBlock, you see

    /**
     * An array of interactive element objects - buttons, select menus, overflow menus, or date pickers.
     *
     * There is a maximum of 25 elements in each action block.
     *
     * @var \Illuminate\Notifications\Slack\Contracts\ElementContract[]
     */
    protected array $elements = [];

which indicates to me that there somewhere is a way to add to those elements (up to 25), since the Slack Blocks Reference indicates that there are many more things that can be added other than what these block kit classes allow.

Yes, I've seen the Laravel Notifications docs, but that doesn't really answer this question, either (unless I'm missing something).

So how do I build the blocks with all of the $elements values?