javascript - Send scheduled message

Question

I've just started on Javascript and Node.js, so I don't really know what to do. Please be patient with me. Thanks!

So I've hosted a node.js on my physical server. I wanted to create a Discord Bot that sends a daily message on specific timings on my server, for example, I want to send a message to a channel saying "Good Morning" every day at 8 am. How do I do it?

Currently, I only have this code to ping the bot (and the server)

/*
 A ping pong bot, whenever you send "ping", it replies "pong".
*/

// Import the discord.js module
const Discord = require('discord.js');

// Create an instance of a Discord client
const client = new Discord.Client();

// The token of your bot - https://discordapp.com/developers/applications/me
const token = 'your bot token here';

// The ready event is vital, it means that your bot will only start reacting to information
// from Discord _after_ ready is emitted
client.on('ready', () => {
  console.log('I am ready!');
});

// Create an event listener for messages
client.on('message', message => {
  // If the message is "ping"
  if (message.content === 'ping') {
    // Send "pong" to the same channel
    message.channel.send('pong');
  }
});

// Log our bot in
client.login(token);

Also, how do I loop this code to ensure that it sends a message everyday? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

so there is an answer for this:

There are two ways to do that, with cron (or something else on different platforms) and setInterval

1) Cron

Create a new file, goodmorning.js with this:

const Discord = require('discord.js');
const client = new Discord.Client();

client.login("token").then(() => {
    console.log("I am ready");
    var guild = client.guilds.get('guildid');
    if(guild && guild.channels.get('channelid')){
        guild.channels.get('channelid').send("Good Morning").then(() => client.destroy());
    } else {
        console.log("nope");
        //if the bot doesn't have guild with the id guildid
        // or if the guild doesn't have the channel with id channelid
    }
    client.destroy();
});

(edit all the needed values: token, guildid and channelid)
And add a cronjob to run everyday at 8am.
This script will attempt to login into Discord and after successful login proceeds to find a guild and a channel, then just send the message, then finally logout (client.destroy()). If it wasn't found a guild or channel, just simply destroy.

2) setInterval

The first problem with this would be that you need to start the script at the exact time you want the code to run, or get a setTimeout to start the setInterval to repeat the code over and over.
untested but should work with possibly some tweaking needed:

const Discord = require('discord.js');
const client = new Discord.Client();

client.on('message', message => {
    //...
});

client.on('ready', () => {
    setTimeout(function(){ // in leftToEight() milliseconds run this:
        sendMessage(); // send the message once
        var dayMillseconds = 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24;
        setInterval(function(){ // repeat this every 24 hours
            sendMessage();
        }, dayMillseconds)
    }, leftToEight())
})

function leftToEight(){
    var d = new Date();
    return (-d + d.setHours(8,0,0,0));
}

function sendMessage(){
    var guild = client.guilds.get('guildid');
    if(guild && guild.channels.get('channelid')){
        guild.channels.get('channelid').send("Good Morning");
    }

}

client.login("token");

---

I would definitely go for the cron option, doesn't require you to have the process running all the time (unless you already have it)