lospec-bot-v4

A bot created for the Lospec Discord server, with the source made available for community contributions or for learning to make your own similar bot.

This is version 4, rewritten from the ground up to use the latest version of discord.js and node modules.

Not all of the functionality from version 3 has been ported over, and the bots are both run concurrently.

Installation

Download

1. Fork this project on Github
2. Locally clone from your fork.
3. In a the project working directory run npm install to download the required nodeJS modules
4. (Optional) Configure your local git repo to have the original repository as upstream so you can directly pull from it

API Key

Make sure you have a discord server set-up where you have admin permissions before following these steps

1. Enter the Discord Developer Portal and create a New Application. This will be your testing application.
2. With the Application created, select the Bot tab from the left panel. Choose Add bot.
3. Under the username, there will be a section labelled token, copy this to your clipboard
4. Create a file called .env on the root of the project
5. Add DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN= to the file, then paste the token afterwards and save

Data Storage

If you have access to a mongodb database, you can set it up to match the production database, or you instead use the local datastore option which just uses .json files.

MongoDB Database

1. Create a MongoDB database
2. Download your certificate and save it to ca-certificate.crt
3. Add MONGO_URI= to the .env file with your connection string, and append &tlsCAFile=ca-certificate.crt to the end
4. Add DB=LospecBotV4 to the .env file
5. Run the bot and it will automatically create the necessary tables and documents and the appropriate values
6. Edit the documents to fill in any blank values
7. Reboot the bot

Please note, if you update these documents manually by editing them, you must reboot the bot immediately for the changes to be recognizes. The data is stored in memory and overwrites the document whenever it's changed.

Local Datastore

If you don't have access to a mongodb database, or find it too confusing to set up (understandably), you can just use the local option:

1. Add LOCAL_DATA_STORAGE=true to the .env file
2. Run the bot, and it will automatically create a ./_data folder and the necessary .json files
3. Edit the documents to fill in any blank values
4. Reboot the bot

Please note, if you update these files manually by editing them, you must reboot the bot immediately for the changes to be recognizes. The data is stored in memory and overwrites the file whenever it's changed.

Running

To run the bot, run the command npm start from the command line from the project root.

Dev

How to expand the bot with new functionality.

Commands

Create a command that users can trigger

Add a file to the ./commands folder with the following exports:

• config - an object containing the JSON configuration for a command
• execute - an async function that is called when the function is run (passes interaction as first argument)

Subcommands

To create a command with subcommands (e.g. /parent sub), create a folder inside the ./commands directory (e.g. ./commands/parent). Then, create a JavaScript file for each subcommand (e.g. ./commands/parent/sub.js).

Each subcommand file should have a default export which is an async function that is called when the subcommand is run. This function will receive the interaction object as its first argument.

The parent command (e.g. parent in /parent sub) should have a config export in a file named after the parent command directly in the ./commands folder (e.g. ./commands/parent.js). This file does not need an execute export if all functionality is handled by subcommands.

Responses

Respond to a message that matches a filter

Add a file to the ./responses folder with the following exports:

• filter - an async function that checks if the message should trigger a response
• execute - an async function that is called when the filter matches

Autocompletes

Add an autocomplete that provides suggestions for command options.

Add a file to the ./autocompletes folder with a default export async function that takes the interaction as its first argument. The function should return an array of choices, either as strings or as objects with { name, value } properties. The loader will handle formatting and calling interaction.respond() with the results (up to 25 entries).

Autocompletes are loaded automatically from the autocompletes folder, similar to commands. You can use the same autocomplete in multiple commands by referencing its name.

To use an autocomplete in a command, set the autocomplete property to true in the command option config, and make sure there is a corresponding autocomplete where the file name matches the option name.

Data Storage

To run the bot, you must have set up one of the two data storage options, explained above. Both options have identical APIs.

First you must import the appropriate document from the data module:

import {CONFIG} from '../data.js';

Modules that use a lot of properties should be set up with their own data store, which is defined in the data module:

export const MYDATAMODULENAME = new Data('my-data-module-slug');

Methods

• .get( <string> key ) - Get the value associated with the provided key
• .set( <string> key, <any> value ) - Set the value of the provided key to the provided value
• .assert( <string> key, <bool> required [optional] ) (async) - Ensure a value exists in the data store, and if not, create a blank value and throw an error (unless required is set to false). Must be awaited. This gives the developer a place to enter the value manually.