How can I send a message every day at a specific hour?

Question

I'm trying to make the bot writing messages at specific times. Example:

const Discord = require("discord.js");
const client = new Discord.Client();
client.on("ready", () => {
  console.log("Online!");
});
var now = new Date();
var hour = now.getUTCHours();
var minute = now.getUTCMinutes();
client.on("message", (message) => {
  if (hour === 10 && minute === 30) {
    client.channels.get("ChannelID").send("Hello World!");
  }
});

Unfortunately, it only works once I trigger another command like:

if (message.content.startsWith("!ping")) {
  message.channel.send("pong!");
}

my message: !ping (at 10:10 o'clock)
-> pong!
-> Hello World!

I guess it needs something that constantly checks the time variables.

Answer 1

I would use cron: with this package you can set functions to be executed if the date matches the given pattern.
When building the pattern, you can use * to indicate that it can be executed with any value of that parameter and ranges to indicate only specific values: 1-3, 7 indicates that you accept 1, 2, 3, 7.

These are the possible ranges:

• Seconds: 0-59
• Minutes: 0-59
• Hours: 0-23
• Day of Month: 1-31
• Months: 0-11 (Jan-Dec)
• Day of Week: 0-6 (Sun-Sat)

Here's an example:

var cron = require("cron");

function test() {
  console.log("Action executed.");
}

let job1 = new cron.CronJob('01 05 01,13 * * *', test); // fires every day, at 01:05:01 and 13:05:01
let job2 = new cron.CronJob('00 00 08-16 * * 1-5', test); // fires from Monday to Friday, every hour from 8 am to 16

// To make a job start, use job.start()
job1.start();
// If you want to pause your job, use job.stop()
job1.stop();

In your case, I would do something like this:

const cron = require('cron');

client.on('message', ...); // You don't need to add anything to the message event listener

let scheduledMessage = new cron.CronJob('00 30 10 * * *', () => {
  // This runs every day at 10:30:00, you can do anything you want
  let channel = yourGuild.channels.get('id');
  channel.send('You message');
});

// When you want to start it, use:
scheduledMessage.start()
// You could also make a command to pause and resume the job