How to Build Your First Discord Bot with Node.js

Nowadays, bots are being used for automating various tasks. Since the release of Amazon's Alexa devices, the hype surrounding automation bots has only started to grow. Besides Alexa, other communication tools like Discord and Telegram offer APIs to develop custom bots.

This article will solely focus on creating your first bot with the exposed Discord API. Maybe the most well-known Discord bot is the Music Bot. The music bot lets you type a song name and the bot will attach a new user to your channel who plays the requested song. It’s a commonly used bot among younger people on gaming or streaming servers.

Let’s get started with creating a custom Discord bot.

Prerequisites

  • Node.js v10 or higher installed (basic knowledge)
  • a Discord account and Discord client
  • basic knowledge of using a terminal

Step 1: Setup Test Server

First of all, we need a test server on which we can later test our Discord bot. We can create a new server by clicking the plus icon in the left bottom corner.

click create server

A pop-up will be displayed that asks you if you want to join a server or create a new one. Of course, we want to create a new server.

select create server

Next, we need to input the name for our server. To keep things simple, I've named the server discord_playground. If you want, you can change the server location depending on where you're located to get a better ping.

server name

If everything went well, you should see your newly created server.

new server

Step 2: Generating Auth Token

When we want to control our bot via code, we need to register the bot first under our Discord account.

To register the bot, go to the Discord Developers Portal and log in with your account.

After logging in, you should be able to see the dashboard. Let's create a new application by clicking the New Application button.

developer dashboard

Next, you'll see a pop-up that asks you to input a name for your application. Let's call our bot my-greeter-bot. By clicking the Create button, Discord will create an API application.

create application

When the application has been created, you'll see the overview of the newly created my-greeter-bot application. You'll see information like a client ID and client secret. This secret will be used later as the authorization token.

overview greeter bot

Now, click on the Bot menu option in the Settings menu. Discord will build our my-greeter-bot application and add a bot user to it.

add bot

When the bot has been built, you get an overview of your custom bot. Take a look at the Token section. Copy this authorization token and write it down somewhere, as we'll need it later to connect to our bot user.

bot tab overview

The post How to Build Your First Discord Bot with Node.js appeared first on SitePoint.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Visual Studio Code: A Power User’s Guide

Image
In this guide, you’ll learn how to take advantage of Visual Studio Code to supercharge your development workflow. This article is written for beginners who may be using Visual Studio Code for the first time. VS Code, as it’s commonly known, is considered a "lightweight" code editor. In comparison with full integrated development environment (IDE) editors which occupy gigabytes of disk space, VS Code only uses less than 200MB when installed. Despite the "lightweight" term, VS Code offers a massive number of features which keep increasing and improving with every new update. For this guide, we'll cover the most popularly used features. Every programmer has their own tool set which they keep updating whenever new workflows are discovered. If you want to learn every tool and feature VS Code has to offer, check out their official documentation . In addition, you may want to keep track of updates for new and improved features. Prerequisites In order to follow alo
Read more

6+ Best Websites for Free Fonts in 2020

Image
I firmly believe that, in order to strike the optimal balance between minimalism and visual appeal, a user interface should display no more than what’s absolutely necessary while making those necessary elements look visually appealing. Keep it simple, but make the simple look amazing. But, what does simple look like exactly? Well, strip away all of the over-the-top marketing gimmicks, redundant features, and cluttering visuals, and most of what’s left is the UI copy and text content. As boring as this sounds, let’s be honest: this is the most important aspect of any app or website. Information and the ability to navigate it is the entire reason users are using our app or website. So with the right typeface coupled with the right font styles (see “ Font vs typeface: the ultimate guide ”), we can create designs that are quite simple and yet visually appealing at the same time. This emphasizes the most important aspects of the design while usin
Read more

How to Contribute to Open Source TypeScript Projects

Image
If you think of the ideas of open source applied to information in an encyclopedia, you get to Wikipedia – lots and lots of small contributions that bubble up to something that’s meaningful. – Matt Mullenweg One of my favorite aspects of open source is the fact that anyone can contribute! It’s like “productive volunteering” (if you’ll humor me). It’s a fantastic way to build something bigger than you, give back to the community, and level up your skills. In this article, we’re going to talk about practical ways for you to get involved in open source TypeScript projects. We’ll first cover assessing your level then jump into how you can find opportunities. Assessing Your Level Before you get started contributing to open source, you want to find your comfort level. Where are you at skill-wise? What level of complexity are you wanting to solve? How much time do you want to spend? These are important questions to consider before diving in. This
Read more