DEV Community: Elitezen

How to Setup a Complete Discord.JS Template Through the Command Line

Elitezen — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 16:40:44 +0000

Setting up a complete boilerplate for a Discord bot can often take a lot of time. From initial files for registering commands, handling commands/events, and templates for the various Discord interaction types, preparing the environment can easily take up to an hour!

I set off to create a command line interface for setting up a fully functional and ready to go Discord Bot which does the job for you in just a couple of minutes.

spawn-discord-bot

spawn-discord-bot is an NPM package for spawning a Discord bot. The template includes all the required files, along with handlers for the various Discord API components. Each command type contains an example file to help you get started.

The end result will be a directory as such:

Getting Started

Open up your command line and navigate to the directory you wish to create your bot in.

Run the following command to begin:



npx spawn-discord-bot

You may be asked to download the package first. Enter Y to do so.

Next, you will be asked to name your bot's folder. Insert a folder name, or hit enter to apply the default (my-discord-bot).

You now need to pick the language of your Discord bot. Use the arrow keys and ENTER to pick.

Your bot template will then download, it will only take a few seconds.

Configuring Your Bot

Next you will need to setup your bot's credentials and example commands.

Follow the steps provided by the command line to begin

npm i will install the required dependencies for the template.

npm run configure will start the configure script which is what you will use to set your client's token, id, and guild id. Make sure you have these on hand and ready.

Make note of the pasting hint

Registering Commands

Before we can turn on the bot, we must register the example commands. If you do not wish to use example commands, delete the example files and move on to the final step.

Run the following command to register:



npm run commands

Commands will register globally by default. Use the local option to only register locally:



npm run commands local

Logging In

Lastly, to turn your bot on:



npm start

YOUR_BOT_NAME has logged in! will appear in the terminal.

And that is it! You now have a fully set Discord.JS client ready to go.

Use The DEV API With This NodeJS Package

Elitezen — Fri, 08 Jul 2022 22:26:35 +0000

Introduction

If you've been looking for an easy way to interact with the DEV API using JavaScript or TypeScript you're in the right place!

I recently dove into the entire DEV API Documentation and created a fully typed API wrapper named devdotto. Although I still consider it to be in it's early stages, the NPM package has full coverage of the DEV API.

GitHub: https://github.com/Elitezen/devdotto
NPM: https://www.npmjs.com/package/devdotto

This package uses the fetch API which is included in the latest version of NodeJS (18.3.0), make sure to update before testing the package out.

Installation

npm i devdotto

Quick Examples

Fetching The Latest Articles

To fetch the latest articles use the getArticles() function.

import { getArticles } from 'devdotto';

const articles = await getArticles();

console.log(articles);

Output:

[
  {
    typeOf: 'article',
    id: 1129536,
    title: 'Follow Friday: React Edition (1 July 2022)',
    description: 'Happy Friday, friends! 🎉 Follow Friday is your weekly opportunity to shout out fellow DEV Community...',
    readablePublishDate: 'Jul 1',
    slug: 'follow-friday-react-edition-1-july-2022-2kpa',
    path: '/devteam/follow-friday-react-edition-1-july-2022-2kpa',
    url: 'https://dev.to/devteam/follow-friday-react-edition-1-july-2022-2kpa',
    commentsCount: 5,
    publicReactionsCount: 20,
    collectionId: 18283,
    publishedTimestamp: '2022-07-01T14:49:40Z',
    positiveReactionsCount: 20,
    coverImage: null,
    socialImage: 'https://dev.to/social_previews/article/1129536.png',
    canonicalUrl: 'https://dev.to/devteam/follow-friday-react-edition-1-july-2022-2kpa',
    createdAt: '2022-07-01T14:49:40Z',
    editedAt: null,
    crosspostedAt: null,
    publishedAt: '2022-07-01T14:49:40Z',
    lastCommentAt: '2022-07-01T18:06:29Z',
    readingTimeMinutes: 1,
    tagList: [ 'watercooler', 'meta', 'javascript', 'react' ],
    tags: 'watercooler, meta, javascript, react',
    user: {
      name: 'Erin Bensinger',
      username: 'erinposting',
      twitterUsername: 'erinposting',
      githubUsername: 'erinb223',
      websiteUrl: null,
      profileImage: 'https://res.cloudinary.com/practicaldev/image/fetch/s--6nTNzTEG--/c_fill,f_auto,fl_progressive,h_640,q_auto,w_640/https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/user/profile_image/494502/2d4eb07b-a07a-46f9-91cd-1b98d862a13c.png',
      profileImage90: 'https://res.cloudinary.com/practicaldev/image/fetch/s--VG4G50pa--/c_fill,f_auto,fl_progressive,h_90,q_auto,w_90/https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/user/profile_image/494502/2d4eb07b-a07a-46f9-91cd-1b98d862a13c.png'
    },
    organization: {
      name: 'The DEV Team',
      username: 'devteam',
      slug: 'devteam',
      profileImage: 'https://res.cloudinary.com/practicaldev/image/fetch/s--CAGmUhNa--/c_fill,f_auto,fl_progressive,h_640,q_auto,w_640/https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/organization/profile_image/1/0213bbaa-d5a1-4d25-9e7a-10c30b455af0.png',
      profileImage90: 'https://res.cloudinary.com/practicaldev/image/fetch/s--mbsgKaXh--/c_fill,f_auto,fl_progressive,h_90,q_auto,w_90/https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/organization/profile_image/1/0213bbaa-d5a1-4d25-9e7a-10c30b455af0.png'
    },
    flareTag: {
      name: 'watercooler',
      bgColorHex: '#D0ECFF',
      textColorHex: '#130074'
    }
  }

  ...
]

You can narrow down specific articles by providing some options:

getArticles({
  perPage: 10,
  tagsExclude: ['rust', 'php'],
  collectionId: '012345',
  page: 1,
  tags: ['node', 'css', 'react'],
  username: 'Some Name',
  state: 'rising',
  top: 3
})

You can fetch a specific article with it's ID:

const article = await getArticleById('12345');

Fetching a User

Example Code:

const user = await getUserById('12345');

Example Output

{
  typeOf: 'user',
  id: 12345,
  username: 'ktec',
  name: 'globalkeith',
  twitterUsername: 'ktec',
  githubUsername: 'ktec',
  summary: null,
  location: null,
  websiteUrl: null,
  joinedAt: 'Mar 21, 2017',
  profileImage: 'https://res.cloudinary.com/practicaldev/image/fetch/s--GqCMW2kU--/c_fill,f_auto,fl_progressive,h_320,q_auto,w_320/https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/user/profile_image/12345/VTpd7P4l.jpg'
}

(Yes, an actual user with the ID of 12345!)

Creating and Editing Articles

To make any authenticated requests, you must first initialize a DEVClient with your API key.

import { DEVClient } from 'devdotto';

const key = 'YOUR_API_KEY';
const client = new DEVClient();

await client.authorize(key);

client.createArticle({
  title: 'My New Article',
  description: 'Making a new article with devdotto!',
  bodyMarkdown: '<h1>Hello World!</h1>',
  tags: ['node'],
  published: false
});

Output

This was a very basic rundown, there are many other functions and endpoints available in the library.

To view the entire list of functions and documentation visit: https://github.com/Elitezen/devdotto

Code Fully Fledged Trivia Games in Discord.JS

Elitezen — Sun, 22 May 2022 22:22:00 +0000

Trivia is often one of the most engaging group games to play, but programming a trivia match requires patience and a strong knowledge of programming.

Luckily, I have created an NPM module that implements fully fledged and polished trivia games straight out of the box with Discord.JS with just a few lines of code!

Full package guide: https://elitezen.github.io/discord-trivia-website/

Github Repo., includes a condensed form of this article in the README.
NPM Page,
Discord Server

👉 What you will need to get started:

A working Discord bot written in Discord.JS, Click here for their extensive guide on how to get one up and running
Discord.JS v14 (latest preferred)
Node version 20 or higher
A Slash command handler (recommended, Click here for setting one up)

Note: This guide uses slash commands, but messages work too!

Getting Started

Open a terminal inside your Discord bot's root directory and install discord-trivia with the following command:

npm install discord-trivia

Then, create a new slash command file:

const { SlashCommandBuilder } = require('discordjs');

module.exports = {
 data: new SlashCommandBuilder()
  .setName('Trivia')
  .setDescription('Lets play some trivia!'),
 async execute(interaction) {

 },
};

At the top of your command file require the GameManager class from Discord Trivia. Create a new trivia manager instance and name it trivia.

const { GameManager } = require('discord-trivia');
const trivia = new GameManager();

Then, inside your execute() function create a new game using trivia.createGame() and supply the channel. Use game.start() to start a match as soon as this command is ran. Make sure to add a .catch() callback to catch any errors.

async execute(interaction) {
    // Create the game
    const game = trivia.createGame(interaction.channel); 

    // Start the game
    game
       .startQueue()
       .catch(console.error);
},

Your code so far should look like this:

const { SlashCommandBuilder } = require('discordjs');
const { GameManager } = require('discord-trivia');
const trivia = new GameManager();

module.exports = {
 data: new SlashCommandBuilder()
  .setName('Trivia')
  .setDescription('Lets play some trivia!'),
 async execute(interaction) {
        const game = trivia.createGame(interaction.channel); 

        game
           .startQueue()
           .catch(console.error);
 },
};

And that's all! Your bot will start a trivia match within the
channel the command was started 🎉🎉🎉

For customization and configuration of the package, visit the guide: https://elitezen.github.io/discord-trivia-website/

Retrieve Trivia Questions With open-trivia-db

Elitezen — Tue, 19 Apr 2022 01:34:35 +0000

Easy Trivia

open-trivia-db is a small, simple and fast wrapper for OpenTriviaDatabase - A Free to use, user-contributed trivia question database. This module is lightweight, easy to use and fully typed!

If you use Discord.JS, checkout discord-trivia

Setup

Setup a JavaScript or TypeScript project and install open-trivia-db via NPM:

npm i open-trivia-db

Basic API Calls

The bread and butter of this library is the getQuestions() function. Provide options describing what kind of questions you want to retrieve such as:

amount - The amount of questions to fetch (min. 1, max. 50)
difficulty - The difficulty of questions.
type - Question type (true/false or multiple choice)
category - The category of questions.

import { getQuestions, CategoryNames } from "open-trivia-db";

const questions = await getQuestions({
  amount: 10,
  category: CategoryNames.Animals,
  difficulty: 'easy',
  type: 'multiple'
})

The result will be an array of questions with the following shape:

[
{
    value: 'The Italian automaker Lamborghini uses what animal as its logo?',
    category: 'Vehicles',
    type: 'multiple',
    difficulty: 'easy',
    correctAnswer: 'Bull',
    incorrectAnswers: [ 'Bat', 'Horse', 'Snake' ],
    allAnswers: [ 'Bat', 'Horse', 'Snake', 'Bull' ],
    checkAnswer: [Function: checkAnswer]
  },
...
]

Sessions

OpenTDB API sessions track the questions it has served you and allows for prevention of duplicate questions throughout multiple API calls.

import { Session, getQuestions } from 'open-trivia-db';

const session = new Session();

async function sessionCalls() {
   await session.start();

   const batch1 = await getQuestions({
      amount: 10,
      difficulty: 'hard',
      session
   });

   const batch2 = await getQuestions({
     amount: 10,
     difficulty: 'hard',
     session
   });


   const completeBatch = [...batch1, ...batch2]; // All unique!
}

session.end();

NPM: https://www.npmjs.com/package/open-trivia-db
GitHub: https://github.com/Elitezen/open-trivia-db-wrapper
Documentation: https://github.com/Elitezen/open-trivia-db-wrapper/wiki/Documentation

DEV Community: Elitezen

How to Setup a Complete Discord.JS Template Through the Command Line

spawn-discord-bot

Getting Started

Configuring Your Bot

Registering Commands

Logging In

Use The DEV API With This NodeJS Package

Introduction

Installation

Quick Examples

Fetching The Latest Articles

Fetching a User

Creating and Editing Articles

Output

Code Fully Fledged Trivia Games in Discord.JS

Getting Started

Retrieve Trivia Questions With open-trivia-db

Easy Trivia

Setup

Basic API Calls

Categories

Sessions