So, you want to create your own Discord bot? But you don't know where to start or how to even create a user? Don't worry, this tutorial will cover the process of building and creating your very own Discord bot!
In order to make a Discord.js bot, you need the following:
- A Code Editor -> I use Visual Studio Code, you can download it here.
- Node.js -> You can download it here. Make sure to download the recommended LTS Version
- A solid understanding of JavaScript.
- A basic understanding of JSON.
- A Discord account(obviously)
If the tutorial is too complicated for you, I will leave the source code in seperate files for you to inspect. DO NOT COPY AND PASTE THE CODES IF YOU WANT TO LEARN
This file will be processing your bot's dependencies, the package name and version, the license and more. Create a folder where you want your bot to be. I recommend creating it in a location with an easy path, because you will need the folder's location later. Create package.json. In this file, you want to specify the name of your bot, the current version and more. For this tutorial, we will name it "Tutorial Bot". Pretty innovative, right?
{
"name": "Tutorial Bot",
"version": "1.0.0",
"description": "My First Bot Made With Discord.js!",
"main": "app.js",
"dependencies": {},
"author": "Your Nickname Here"
}
This is all you'll need for now. As you probably already noticed, we left the "dependencies" part empty. This will automatically be replaced with all the dependencies you will need and install.
This file will hold our bot token, which we can get here. We will take care of the token later in this tutorial. It will also hold the prefix for the bot, and the adminID, for developer commands.
Create a file named config.json. Enter the following code:
{
"token": "BOT-TOKEN-HERE",
"prefix": "!",
"adminID": "YOUR-ID-HERE"
}
You can get your Discord ID by entering the User Settings and enabling Developer Mode: Appearance>Advanced>Developer Mode and turn it on. Right-click your profile in a server and you will see the option "Copy ID". Click it and you will have your ID which you can use for special things.
Now, the time has come to actually develop your bot. There are many methods to develop a bot, we will use the most basic method. Create app.js. Enter the following code:
const Discord = require('discord.js'); // Require discord.js for your bot to communicate with the Discord API
const config = require('./config.json'); // Our config file
const client = new Discord.Client();
client.on('ready', () => { // When bot is online and ready
console.log(`I'm ready!`);
});
client.on("message", message => { // When the bot spots a message
// --------------===== Variables =====-------------- //
if(message.author.bot) return; // Doesn't respond to bots
if(message.content.indexOf(config.prefix) !== 0) return; // Only responding to existing commands that start with "!"
const args = message.content.slice(config.prefix.length).trim().split(/ +/g); // Configure arguments for the commands
const command = args.shift().toLowerCase(); // Detect existing commands
// --------------===== Commands =====-------------- //
if(command === "ping") { // "!ping"
message.channel.send('Pong!'); // Send a message saying "Pong!"
}
});
client.login(config.token); // Log in with the bot token from our config file.
So, finally, we need to create a user account for the bot and get it's token.
Step 4.1
Go to this website. Log in with your own account if needed.
Step 4.2
Click on "New app". You will be taken to a page where you can enter the name of your app, and an optional description.
Open a command prompt using Windows + R and entering cmd
Navigate to the location of your app.js file using cd [Path] Now, install discord.js using npm install discord.js Once installed, use the command node app.js and watch the bot go online!
Now, go to the server where you invited your bot in, and send "!ping" in chat and see the bot react with "Pong!"
I surely hope this helped you out :)