TechSupportBot

TechSupportBot is a Dockerized Discord bot. Written on top of the Python Discord API, it provides the loading and unloading of custom extensions to extend and scale the bot as much as you want.

Deployment Guide

External setup

You will need to create a discord bot and get the token to be able to use this application. To get your bot created and obtain your token, follow these steps:

1. Go to https://discord.com/developers/applications, sign into your discord account if needed
2. Click on "New Application", name it, then click "Create"
3. On the side menu, go to "Bot" and click "Add bot"
4. Under bot, click "Reset Token", type in 2FA code if prompted, and write down the token. Keep this token secret, you should never share it.
5. Make sure you turn on all the "Privileged Gateway Intents", which are currently "Presence", "Message Content", and "Server Members"
6. To have the bot join your server, go to "OAuth2", "URL Generator". Select "bot" under "Scopes", then select "Administrator". The link to join will be at the bottom of the page.

Configuration setup

You will need to create and config 2 files to get this system running.
First, you will need to create the template config files from the default.
Start by cloning the repo, git clone [email protected]:r-Techsupport/TechSupportBot.git.
Then do the following:

cd TechSupportBot
cp default.env .env
cp config.default.yml config.yml

.env file

The first file we will edit is the .env file. This is where you will store database information.
You will need to create a username and password postgres. You will also need to create a db name for postgres. This works best when it is all lowercase, but it is not strictly required.
When filling in the information, do not include spaces or quotes. Just put the content directly after the equals sign.
You will need all of this information again, so make sure to keep note of it.

config.yml

This is the configuration file for the bot itself.
First, configure the token and admin ID. The token is the discord token you got earlier. Put this token in quotes following the auth_token: line. Example: auth_token: "abcd_totally_real_token"
For the admin ID, get your user ID by right clicking on your name, either on the side bar or after you sent a message, and clicking "Copy ID". Put your ID in single quotes in the array.

postgres

For postgres, you will need the username, password, and DB name you created previously. Enter it exactly as found in your .env file.
Do not change the port or host.

Additional configuration

All the additional configuration is optional, and is not required to start the bot. This includes all API keys. The default settings everywhere else work, but can be changed later if desired.

Final tasks

The only thing left to do is run make start. This will build the container, download the databases, and starts all the containers.

Makefile

The Makefile offers shortcut commands for development.

• sync makes an updated pipenv virtual environment.
• check-format checks the formatting without changing files. Required black and isort be installed on your computer.
• format checks formatting and changes files. Required black and isort be installed on your computer.
• lint runs pylint.
• test runs unit tests.
• build builds the Docker image.
• rebuild will build the latest version of the bot, and (if needed) recreate the docker container
• devbuild will format the code, rebuild the container, start the new version, and display container logs
• start starts the entire system, databases and all. This can also be used as a fast update, as it won't force a full rebuild.
• update stops all the containers, builds a fresh build of the bot, and starts all containers.
• clean removes all unused docker assets, including volumes. This may be destructive.
• down brings down the bot container.
• reset brings down all the containers, cleans all docker objects, builds a new instance of the bot, and starts all the containers.
• restart restarts the bot and all databases.
• logs shows the bot logs.
• establish_config creates a config.yml file if it doesn't exist.

Making extensions

On startup, the bot will load all extension files in the techsupport_bot/extensions/ directory. These files hold commands for the bot to use with its prefix. Each command is an async function decorated as a command, and each file must have an entrypoint function called setup, which tells the loading process how to add the extension file.

A (very) simple example:

from core import auxiliary, cogs
from discord.ext import commands
async def setup(bot):
    await bot.add_cog(Greeter(bot=bot))
class Greeter(cogs.BaseCog):
    async def hello_command(self, ctx) -> None:
        await auxiliary.add_list_of_reactions(
            message=ctx.message, reactions=["🇭", "🇪", "🇾"]
        )
    @commands.command(
        name="hello",
        brief="Says hello to the bot",
        description="Says hello to the bot (because they are doing such a great job!)",
        usage="",
    )
    async def hello(self, ctx):
        await self.hello_command(ctx)

Extensions can be configured per-guild with settings saved on Postgres. There are several extensions included in the main repo, so please reference them for more advanced examples.