How to send a message with discord.py without a command

Question

import discord
import asyncio

client = discord.Client()
@client.event
async def on_ready():
    print("I'm ready.")

async def send(message):
    await client.send_message(client.get_channel("123456789"), message)

client.run("token")

loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()
loop.run_until_complete(send("hello"))

Hi, i want to make a GUI. When someone put in his name and press "OK" my discord bot should send a message. Basically i thought i call the async by it's name, didn't work. Then i made a event loop. worked with a print(), but the bot doesn't send a message, so i thought it is not ready, when i put wait_until_ready() there it executed nothing, so i thought i have to put the client.run("token") before the event loop, didn't work either.

can you guys help me? :)

Answer 1

The reason your code is not working is because client.run is blocking, meaning that nothing after it will execute. This means your loop will never be reached.

To get around this, use client.loop.create_task.

The github of discord.py has an example of a background task, found here. You should be able to use this as reference. Currently the task posts a message to the given channel every minute, but you can easily modify it to wait for a specific action.

New discord.py versions

import discord
import asyncio

client = discord.Client()

async def my_background_task():
    await client.wait_until_ready()
    counter = 0
    channel = client.get_channel(id=123456789) # replace with channel_id
    while not client.is_closed():
        counter += 1
        await channel.send(counter)
        await asyncio.sleep(60) # task runs every 60 seconds

@client.event
async def on_ready():
    print('Logged in as')
    print(client.user.name)
    print(client.user.id)
    print('------')

client.loop.create_task(my_background_task())
client.run('token')

Older discord.py versions

import discord
import asyncio

client = discord.Client()

async def my_background_task():
    await client.wait_until_ready()
    counter = 0
    channel = discord.Object(id='channel_id_here')
    while not client.is_closed:
        counter += 1
        await client.send_message(channel, counter)
        await asyncio.sleep(60) # task runs every 60 seconds

@client.event
async def on_ready():
    print('Logged in as')
    print(client.user.name)
    print(client.user.id)
    print('------')

client.loop.create_task(my_background_task())
client.run('token')

Answer 2

For responsive behaviour, you have two options: you can write a on_message event handler, or use the discord.ext.commands module. I recommend using commands, as it's more powerful and doesn't keep everything in a single coroutine.

from discord.ext.commands import Bot

bot = Bot(command_prefix='!')

@bot.event
async def on_ready():
    print("I'm ready.")
    global target_channel
    target_channel = bot.get_channel("412678093006831617")

@bot.command()
async def send(*, message):                         
    global target_channel
    await bot.send_message(channel, message)

This would be called with !send Some message. The *, message syntax just tells the bot not to try and parse the message contents further.