Eris: A Discord Bot Guide

Start building your bot

I will not be talking about how to create a bot account, get the bot token etc. That should be quite simple. However, should you require any assistance, feel free to refer hereopen in new window.

Now, we're finally getting to the exciting parts! Since your bot is in your server now, the next step is to start coding and get it online.

Creating the bot file

Open up your terminal/Command Prompt, navigate to the root folder of your project and run the following:

# For Windows, run `npm i -g touch-cli`
touch index.js # or <insert-name>.js
touch .env

Now, open index.js and .env in your text editor.

Logging into Discord

Once you've created index.js, do a quick check to see if you have everything setup correctly. Copy & paste the following code into index.js and save it. Don't worry if you don't understand it right away—we explain more in-depth after this.

// index.js
const Eris = require('eris');
require('dotenv').config();
const bot = new Eris(process.env.TOKEN);
// Replace TOKEN with your bot account's token

bot.on("ready", () => { // When the bot is ready
    console.log("Ready!"); // Log "Ready!"
});

bot.on("error", (err) => {
  console.error(err); // or your preferred logger
});

bot.on("messageCreate", (message) => { // When a message is created
    if(message.content === "!ping") { // If the message content is "!ping"
        message.channel.createMessage("Pong!");
        // Send a message in the same channel with "Pong!"
    } else if(message.content === "!pong") { // Otherwise, if the message is "!pong"
        message.channel.createMessage("Ping!");
        // Respond with "Ping!"
    }
});

bot.connect(); // Get the bot to connect to Discord

Put the following in .env

TOKEN=your-bot-token

I will now explain it.
First, we require the eris and dotenv module, and create a bot client:

const Eris = require('eris');
require('dotenv').config();
const bot = new Eris(process.env.TOKEN); // TOKEN from the .env file

Get the bot to print "Ready!" in the console when it has logged in, and print the error in the console when it encounters an error:

bot.on("ready", () => { // When the bot is ready
    console.log("Ready!"); // Log "Ready!"
});

bot.on("error", (err) => {
  console.error(err); // or your preferred logger
});

Listen for the messageCreate event:

bot.on("messageCreate", (message) => {
  // ...
});

Check the message content, if the content is !ping, send "Pong!" in the channel. If the content in !pong, send "Ping!" in the channel.

bot.on("messageCreate", (message) => { // When a message is created
    if(message.content === "!ping") { // If the message content is "!ping"
        message.channel.createMessage("Pong!");
        // Send a message in the same channel with "Pong!"
    } else if(message.content === "!pong") { // Otherwise, if the message is "!pong"
        message.channel.createMessage("Ping!");
        // Respond with "Ping!"
    }
});

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Although it's not a lot, at least we learnt how to send and recieve messages. We will be writing more command in the next part.

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