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Discord Bot

Screenshot of Discord Bot

A Discord bot built to automate common tasks and bridge the community.

Code

This bot was born out of the need to automate moderation tasks and enhance the community experience on Discord. Designed for a private server, it offered basic tools such as auto-welcome, reminders, and role management, aiming to streamline numerous daily actions.

Project Story

  1. Origin of the Idea While managing a server with dozens of users, the need arose to simplify repetitive tasks: assigning roles, greeting new members, and creating personalized reminders.

  2. Expansion Toward Minecraft After stabilizing the core Discord features, integration with a private Minecraft server was proposed, enabling in-game event notifications (e.g., game start, server downtime alerts) and coordinating activities across both platforms.

Development Process

  1. Defining Features

    • Automated moderation (kick/ban on prohibited words)
    • Reminder and scheduling system
    • Connection to a lightweight database for logs and settings

  2. Implementation with discord.py

    • Setting up asynchronous events (on_message, on_member_join)
    • Using coroutines and promise-like patterns to chain calls without blocking the bot

  3. External API Integration

    • Making HTTP requests to the Minecraft server’s API
    • Parsing JSON responses to extract player data and server status

  4. Persistent Synchronization

    • Designing a simple SQLite schema to record reminders and events
    • Performing asynchronous read/write operations to avoid bottlenecks

  5. Deployment and Maintenance

    • Configuring GitHub Actions for automated tests
    • Continuous deployment on Heroku with updates triggered by pushes to the main branch

Usage

  • !help – Displays all available commands.
  • !remindme [time] [message] – Schedules a reminder that’s saved in the database and triggers after the specified interval.
  • !mcstatus – Checks the Minecraft server status and shows the current player count.
  • !welcome on|off – Enables or disables the welcome message for new members.

Learnings and Challenges

  • Understanding Promises and Asynchronous Programming Mastering async/await chains and handling exceptions in callbacks without blocking the main thread.
  • API Handling Designing lightweight HTTP clients, processing responses, and transforming data to enrich Discord messages.
  • Environment Synchronization Aligning the local development cycle with cloud deployment, ensuring environment variables and credentials remain up to date.
  • Multi-Platform Coordination Overcoming communication challenges between Discord and Minecraft, such as latency and differing message formats.