negan-bot

This project is meant to deliver some basic, extensible discord bot (as the name may have suggested).

Getting started / Prerequisites

First of all, you need to register your bot (application) on Discord. You can do that on the Discord Developer Portal. I won't provide a tutorial for that process at this point.

I'm developing negan-bot using node version 16.13.0 and TypeScript version 4.4.4. This project uses discord.js in version ^13.2.0.

Install and run

In order to create a new, custom bot you can follow these steps:

1. In the desired directory, run npm init to create a new npm module
2. Run npm i negan-bot --save to install all the dependencies
3. In your main .ts-file, paste the following:

import { NeganBot } from 'negan-bot';

const bot: NeganBot = new NeganBot();

4. Set up your environment (see Environment Config)
5. Create a tsconfig.json in order to configure the TypeScript compiler, paste the following (example):

  {
      "compilerOptions": {
          "target": "es5",
          "module": "CommonJS",
          "declaration": true,
          "outDir": "./dist",
          "strict": true,
          "lib": [
              "dom",
              "es2015"
          ],
          "moduleResolution": "node",
          "sourceMap": true,
          "strictNullChecks": true,
          "suppressImplicitAnyIndexErrors": true,
          "experimentalDecorators": true,
          "emitDecoratorMetadata": true,
          "noImplicitAny": false,
          "noUnusedLocals": true,
          "rootDir": "./src",
          "noUnusedParameters": true,
          "esModuleInterop": true,
          "allowSyntheticDefaultImports": true,
          "resolveJsonModule": true
      },
      "include": [
          "src/**/*.ts"
      ],
      "exclude": [
          "node_modules"
      ]
  }

6. Run tsc to build your bot.
7. Run node dist/<your-main-file>.ts
8. Your custom bot should be up and running

Environment config

The bot reads certain environment variables, for example the Discord OAuth token required to connect to the Discord API. You can either set those variables in your system, or just place a file named .env in the root directory of this project.

Example .env:

# The oauth token for your bot, provided by Discord
TOKEN=ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ1234

# development | production
ENVIRONMENT=development

# The command prefix
PREFIX=_

# name for the sqlite3 db file
# Only required if using the SQLite-Adapter
SQLITE_FILENAME=my-negan-bot.sqlite3

# url that will be shown in the bot's status (STREAMING <URL>)
URL=https://example.com

# id of the bot owner's discord user
BOT_OWNER_ID=1234567890123456789

# id of the debug channel. the bot needs to be able to post messages into that channel
# (if a debug channel has been set)
DEBUG_CHANNEL_ID=123456789012345678

---

Import and use a module

To make use of a module, you need to pass it to registerModules().

See example for hall of fame module:

import { NeganBot } from 'negan-bot';
import { HallOfFameModule } from 'negan-module-hall-of-fame';

const bot: NeganBot = new NeganBot();

bot.registerModules([
    HallOfFameModule
]);

const hofModule: HallOfFameModule | undefined = bot.getModule(HallOfFameModule);
if (hofModule) {
    hofModule.setThreshold(2);
}

---

Writing own modules

Example

For an example on how to create a module for negan-bot, have a look at hall of fame module.

Extend AbstractModule and decorate with @Module()

Your module will have to extend AbstractModule. Furthermore, you need to pass some information to the ModuleHub, using the @Module() decorator.

Example:

@Module({
    name: 'exampleModule',  // the module's name
    alwaysActivated: true   // whether it's always enabled or can be disabled
})
export class MyNewModule extends AbstractModule {
    ...
}

Use the built-in sqlite3-adapter

I've built a very basic sqlite3-adapter. You can use it (or write your own database-adapter, and use that one) by calling this.database.create(), this.database.read(), this.database.update() or this.database.delete().

Example:

this.database.read<string>(guildID, 'news-channel')
    .then((channelID: string | undefined) => {
        if (channelID) {
            this.newsChannelID.set(guildID, channelID);
        }
    });

The built-in sqlite3-adapter is not meant to be used in production environments.

Initialization

Once the underlying discord client is ready, the ModuleHub will call each module's init(). So that's the right place to do some initialization, for example loading data from the database.

Registering commands

In your module, implement the method registerCommands(): Commands. This method will automatically be called by the ModuleHub. I'm planning to create slash commands out of the registered commands in the future.

Example:

protected registerCommands(): Commands {
    return {
        'time': {
            onlyMods: true,
            handler: (msg: Message) => this.postTime(msg)
        }
    };
}

private postTime(msg: Message): void {
    msg.reply({ content: `It's <t:${Math.floor(Date.now() / 1000)}:T> o'clock.` });
}

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