How to create a Discord Bot : A Trivia Bot for fun!

Creating a Discord Trivia Bot is as easy as 1, 2, 3, 4 steps plus unlimited fun!

1. Requirements

• Familiar with Javascript
• NodeJS installed. Get it here https://nodejs.org/en/
• A Discord Account

2. Getting Started

• First, you need to create a Discord app. Go here (Make sure you are logged in to your Discord account)
  
• Configure your App, Set the Name and Image then click on "Create App"
  
• Congratulations your app has been created. Take note of the Client ID and Client Secret (You will need this in the latter part). Now click on "Create a Bot User" to obviously create a bot for your app.
  
  
• Congratulations once again! you now have your Discord app! Yay! Take note of the bot token
  
• Now let's add our bot to a server. From your browser, go to this URL https://discordapp.com/oauth2/authorize?&client_id=YOUR_CLIENT_ID_HERE&scope=bot&permissions=0 replace YOUR_CLIENT_ID_HERE with your own Client ID above. You need to have Manage Server permission to add the bot on the server.
  
  

3. The Code

The fun part starts here. You are the father of this bot so let's go ahead and make him useful.

• First let's create a folder to store our bot's files. In that folder create a file called package.json. This file will contain package information of our bot node application. Below is a sample package information:

{
  "name": "precise-trivia-bot",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "PreciseTrivia",
  "main": "precise_trivia_bot.js",
  "author": "@precise",
  "dependencies": {
    "discord.io": "^2.5.3",
    "winston": "^2.3.1"
  }
}

• Next let's create a file called token.json to store our bot token we got earlier.

{
   "token": "MzYxxxxxxxxxTI5.DK0jyyyyyyyyyyyvCNrQsE8XxI"
}

• Last but not least, create a file for the main code of our bot. In this example, I have precise_trivia_bot.js - make sure that the same filename is reflected on the main attribute of your package.json file. Place the sample code below:

var Discord = require('discord.io');
var logger = require('winston');
var auth = require('./token.json');
// logger settings
logger.remove(logger.transports.Console);
logger.add(logger.transports.Console, {
    colorize: true
});
logger.level = 'debug';
// Initialize Discord Bot
var bot = new Discord.Client({
   token: auth.token,
   autorun: true
});
bot.on('ready', function (evt) {
    logger.info('Logged in as: ' + bot.username + ' - (' + bot.id + ')');
});
bot.on('message', function (user, userID, channelID, message, evt) {
    // The bot listens for command messages which we set to start with `!`
    if (message.substring(0, 1) == '!') {
        var args = message.substring(1).split(' ');
        var cmd = args[0];

        args = args.splice(1);
        switch(cmd) {
            // !start
            case 'start':
                bot.sendMessage({
                    to: channelID,
                    message: 'Hello there <@' + userID +'>'
                });
            break;
            // add any other commands here.
         }
     }
});

4. Run and Deploy

Go to the main folder of your bot and run the main file.
$ node precise_trivia_bot.js

Tap yourself at the back! If you see $ info: Logged in as:.... you have successfully run your bot. Well done champ! Now let's go to our Discord Server and check if our bot is responding. The bot should respond to the command !start as what we have set in the main code above.

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BONUS: This ain't a trivia bot without trivia questions! So here it is in action...

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I code with purpose. I am @precise.