How To Build a Discord Bot with Node.js

Not recommended.

No command handler (all commands in the main file). No informations about intents (very important when the bot hit 100+ servers). Nothing about slash commands. So it’s not “How To Build a Discord Bot with Node.js” but “how to build a very useless basic discord bot with node.js”.

Don’t waste your time and take a look on YouTube.

Correct slash command link: https://discordjs.guide/interactions/slash-commands.html#registering-slash-commands

Additional Settings

If you aren’t able to make the bot an administrator, then at least give it as many options possible under the “text permissions” column. When you follow the link to add the bot to the channel, make sure there is a green checkmark next to each of the items you selected. If you notice any denied permissions then your bot will not be able to do those activities. You may have to adjust your permissions on the server you are attempting to add the bot.

There are also new setting for a bot you may want to adjust in the https://discord.com/developers/applications/

• You may want to uncheck Public Bot if you want to control what servers the bot goes to
• Check the items under the privileged gateway intents (Presence intent, server members intent, message content intent)

Updated Script for discord.js v14

Here is a new code snippt using discord.js v14

// Require the necessary discord.js classes
const { Client, Events, GatewayIntentBits } = require('discord.js');
const { token } = require('./config.json');

const client = new Client({
 intents: [
 GatewayIntentBits.Guilds,
 GatewayIntentBits.GuildMessages,
 GatewayIntentBits.MessageContent
 ]
});

client.on("messageCreate", (message) => {

 if (message.author.bot) return;
 if (!message.content.startsWith(prefix)) return;

 const commandBody = message.content.slice(prefix.length);
 const args = commandBody.split(' ');
 const command = args.shift().toLowerCase();

 if (command === "ping") {
 const timeTaken = Date.now() - message.createdTimestamp;
 message.reply("Pong! This message had a latency of " + timeTaken.ms + ".");
 }

 else if (command === "sum") {
 const numArgs = args.map(x => parseFloat(x));
 const sum = numArgs.reduce((counter, x) => counter += x);
 message.reply("The sum of all the arguments you provided is " + sum + "!");
 }
});

Run script in background forever

If you want your script to always stay running on your server in the background, look into the forever npm package: https://www.npmjs.com/package/forever

Once you install it you can run your script: forever index.js

If you want to see what scripts are running you can use forever list

If you want forever to watch your file for changes and automatically reload it, you can run it with the -w hook:

forever -w index.js

This comment has been deleted

If you want to node script to run forever in the background, checkout the forever npm package: https://www.npmjs.com/package/forever

If you want forever to watch your file for changes and automatically reload, run it with the -w flag:

forever -w index.js