"Stay a while, and listen!"

Guidebot is a very simple bot that I'm using on the Discord.js Official server to provide links to my Discord.js Bot Guide.

There's not "installation" per se, this isn't a module but really just an example code. To get it, run this:

git clone https://github.com/eslachance/guidebot.git

It's also used as one of the most basic examples of a "proper" command handler where each command is in a separate file. There are 3 parts to the command handler.

The very basic code for making a command is this (you may use it as a template):

exports.run = (bot, msg, params = []) => {
  // do stuff
};

exports.help = {
  name : "command",
  description: "Command Description",
  usage: "command <argument>"
};

Currently, the //do stuff code is the same as you would normally use inside a normal message handler, so you can use msg.channel.sendMessage("blah"), check msg.author.id, etc. The help object is used by the help command provided in this repository.

There are a few commands also provided as an example, for instance ping. guide is a command I personally use for this bot, obviously there's no need to use it yourself but it shows a way to add some external data in the form of an object added at the top of the file.

This is the part that actually loads the commands in memory:

// Uses Discord.Collection() mostly for the helpers like `map()`, to be honest.
bot.commands = new Discord.Collection();
// Load the contents of the `/cmd/` folder and each file in it.
fs.readdir(`./cmd/`, (err, files) => {
  if(err) console.error(err);
  console.log(`Loading a total of ${files.length} commands.`);
  // Loops through each file in that folder
  files.map(f=> {
    // require the file itself in memory
    let props = require(`./cmd/${f}`);
    console.log(`Loading Command: ${props.help.name}. :ok_hand:`);
    // add the command to the Collection
    bot.commands.set(props.help.name, props);
  });
});

Keen eyes may realize that I'm adding the commands straight into bot.commands which literally extends the bot object. The reason I'm doing this is to prevent overloading the function calling the commands with a whole lot of arguments. Otherwise, exports.run = (bot, msg, params = []) => { might look more like exports.run = (bot, msg, params = [], reload, commands, etc, something else, blah, whatever) => {

It's a question of readability to be honest, and as far as know, will not cause any issues unless you decide to run bot.destroy()...

The message handler is often the bigget part of a discord.js bot file... but here it's small, and elegant:

bot.on('message', msg => {
  // Ignore message with no prefix for performance reasons
  if(!msg.content.startsWith(config.prefix)) return;
  // Get the command by getting the first part of the message and removing  the prefix.
  var command = msg.content.split(" ")[0].slice(config.prefix.length);
  // Get the params in an array of arguments to be used in the bot
  var params = msg.content.split(" ").slice(1);

  if(bot.commands.has(command)) {
    var cmd = bot.commands.get(command);
    // restricted commands (with ID for now). If ID is wrong, exit and return
    if(cmd.help.restrict && !cmd.help.restrict(msg.author.id)) return;
    // Run the `exports.run()` function defined in each command.
    cmd.run(bot, msg, params);
  }
});

The rest of the bot file is pretty much your standard stuff. Require some files, log some events, login with the token and stuff.