DEV Community: 12944qwerty

Hosting a Discord.py Bot with Repl.it

12944qwerty — Mon, 08 Jun 2020 23:29:11 +0000

I know that hosting a discord bot with Repl.it isn't very conventional. I've gotten multiple remarks about hosting it there. But I didn't really have any alternative ways of hosting a bot there.

However, hosting a python discord bot with repl.it was quite hard. I had scraped the internet for quite some time before finding a solution.

I just had to make a keep alive script and use Uptime Robot.

The keep alive script is very simple and isn't very long. You just need to include flask in requirements.txt and use threads.
keep_alive.py

from flask import Flask
from threading import Thread

app = Flask('')

@app.route('/')
def home():
    return "Bot is online"

def run():
  app.run(host='0.0.0.0',port=8080)

def keep_alive():  
    t = Thread(target=run)
    t.start()

Then on your main python file, import the keep_alive() function. Then, right before you run your bot, include keep_alive().

This code, in summary, makes a website that just says "Bot is online"

However, repl.it doesn't keep this code on 24/7. You need to make a GET request to this site every so often for it to run constantly. This is where Uptime Robot comes in.

Go to https://uptimerobot.com and sign up with a free plan. Then create a monitor by clicking the button.

You should see a screen like this:

For monitor type, put Http(s). Put whatever unique name you want in Friendly Name. For URL (or IP) you want to put the URL that the flask shows up on. Once you run the discord bot on repl, a box appears on the top-right of the interface with the URL.

That's it! It's done. Just click run on repl.it and you can close the tab. It works!

If you have any questions, let me know :D

How do you make arguments in bash with python?

12944qwerty — Fri, 30 Aug 2019 12:43:09 +0000

I've recently used django to make websites, and while making them, I found that I could enter arguments into python files. I used python manage.py <arg> and it would do the specific things that it's supposed to do. I tried looking into manage.py to see how this was possible, but there was nothing there that would allow me to customize these args. (these arguments are honestly hard for me to remember)

So, my question for everyone, is how to make my own arguments? Or how to customize them?

Repl.it - Pros & Cons

12944qwerty — Thu, 29 Aug 2019 19:16:38 +0000

This is my first post, so hopefully it will turn out well

I've used repl.it multiple times in the past because I used a chromebook and didn't want to convert it to crouton. I found that it was a really good way for coding, in any language. I've used this for a couple months to code my discord bot, Ratchet. I've mainly used python for this, but all of the pros and cons should apply for many languages.

All of the languages in these categories are included:

Pros	Cons
This is a web browser application. You don't need to download anything.	You need to be connected to the internet for your code to run at all.
Addons are easy to 'download'. Just write their names.	I only know of this for python
This can run for a really long time	Not forever though. If you close your computer, it will stop.
Auto Saving onto Cloud. You can also download all of the files if you're offline	Doesn't save onto cloud. So, if you refresh....
Debugging	I've never tried this feature, so, I don't know any cons...
Real Time Collaborating	Currently in Beta
A community. You can ask any questions for problems you have with repl or coding	It is not as fast as stack overflow.
It also has a console and uses linux	This console is really hard to use, (for me). I couldn't understand how to do bash commands and etc.

I'll keep updating as I find more. (Or leave a comment for things you find)

Let me know for anything I can improve on in the future with writing posts. As I said, it is my first post.