Build-a-Bot

Welcome! This package is very simple to use, and will get you up and running with Discord bots in no time at all. It uses the discord.js package for interfacing with the Discord API. Please see the discord.js documentation for further help on using the objects you will use in this package.

This package will allow you to login to Discord as a bot user, and then create commands and event handlers for your bot to add awesome functionality, just by using simple command-line commands (from version 1.3.0).

The coloured-logger package is being used by the bot for logging messages to the console and to files.

Usage

Installation

Install the package with npm install buildabot. In your main project file, simply use require("buildabot")(); at the top of your file to set up the bot. The bot will create a folder named buildabot at the root of your project, make sure to set your bot's user token in the settings.json file, which is created for you.

Customising Bot Intents

Discord now requires you to declare a set of 'intents' that your bot uses. This is essentially what events/interactions your bot receives and can use. Some of these are 'privileged', meaning you can only use them if your bot is in <100 servers, or if your bot has been verified.

By default, buildabot uses the following set of intents:

• GUILDS
• GUILD_MEMBERS
• GUILD_MESSAGES
• GUILD_INVITES
• GUILD_MESSAGE_REACTIONS
• DIRECT_MESSAGES

Since version 1.7.0, you can now customise the intents that buildabot uses, in case you do not want to use certain intents/privileged intents. To do so, when using require("buildabot")(), simply pass in an object with an intents array, containing a set of intent flags. You can find the intent flags by importing discord.js, under Intents.FLAGS. You can find more information on this here.

An example of customising the intents might look like this:

const { Intents } = require("discord.js");
require("buildabot")({ intents: [ Intents.FLAGS.GUILDS, Intents.FLAGS.GUILD_MESSAGES ] });

Adding Commands and Events

As of version 1.3.0, you can now create commands and events using the console. Type npx bab to see the command usage.

You have two choices, you can either use the interactive creation process, or a one-line command to create either commands or events:

Interactive: Type either npx bab create command or npx bab create event and you will be guided through the creation process for a command or an event. It will then create the file in the ./buildabot/commands/ or ./buildabot/events/ directories, from there you can then add your code for your handlers.

One-Line Creation: For commands, the command you need to use is: npx bab create command <commandName> <argsText> <description [permissions..]

And for events, this is the command: npx bab create event <fileName> <eventName>

Files will be created in the same place.

Note: The prefix and command-list commands have been already set up for you and are internal commands, so you cannot create these commands. If you don't like them, feel free to remove them from the ./node_modules/buildabot/lib/commands folder.

Using Program Settings and Stored Data

The handler functions created for commands and event handlers both have a globals parameter. This contains important objects and data essential for managing your bot.

Both command and event handlers have access to the following:

• settings - The application settings, loaded from ./buildabot/data/settings.json.
• data - The application data, loaded from ./buildabot/data/data.json.
• client - The Client object from the discord.js package used to connect to Discord.
• utils - The module exports from this package's utils.js file.

Additionally, command handlers have access to commands - This is an object containing command names as keys and their handlers as the values, in case you need to read from this or modify it in any way.

The utils object can be used to save the program settings and data at any point, asynchronously. Simply use globals.utils.saveSettings(settings); or globals.utils.saveData(data); to save the settings or data during runtime. A success/error message will be logged to the console after completion, or if there is a problem.

Footnote

That's about it, so get into it and go and make some awesome Discord bots! Good luck! P.S. Don't forget to report any issues on the GitHub repo!