Python Discord Bot: Play Music and Send Gifs
In this tutorial, we’ll make a Python Discord bot that can play music in the voice channels and send GIFs. Discord is an instant messaging and digital distribution platform designed for creating communities. Users can easily enter chat rooms, initiate video calls, and create multiple groups for messaging friends.
We’ll skip the basics and jump straight over to the music playing. Check out this Medium article to catch up on the basics of setting up your bot. In the end, our Python Discord bot will look like the cover image of this article!
Before we dive in: remember to allow Administrator permissions for the bot.
Thanks to Rohan Krishna Ullas, who wrote this guest tutorial! Make sure to check out his Medium profile for more articles from him. If you want to write for Python Land too, please contact us.
Table of Contents
Part 1: Importing all the libraries
First, create a virtual environment and install the requirements:
Next, let’s set up the .env file for our project. Create a .env file so that we can separate the environment configuration variables (these are variables whose values are set outside the program) from the main code:
Then use Python import to load all the needed modules in the main file app.py :
The module youtube_dl is an open-source download manager for video and audio content from YouTube and other video hosting websites.
Now we need to set intents for our bot. Intents allow a bot to subscribe to specific buckets of events, allowing developers to choose which events the bot listens to and to which it doesn’t. For example, sometimes we want the bot to listen to only messages and nothing else.
Part 2: Using youtube_dl to download audio
The next step in building our Python Discord bot is dealing with the part that actually downloads the audio file from the video link we provide. Please note that this bo is just a demonstration. It’s not illegal to download from YouTube for personal use according to this article, but it might be against the YouTube Terms Of Service. Please be sensible and use this for personal use only.
The from_url() method of YTDLSource class takes in the URL as a parameter and returns the filename of the audio file which gets downloaded. You can read the youtube_dl documentation at their GitHub repository.
Part 3: Adding commands to the Python Discord bot
Now let’s add the join() method to tell the bot to join the voice channel and the leave() method to tell the bot to disconnect:
Here we first check if the user who wants to play music has already joined the voice channel or not. If not, we tell the user to join first.
Awesome! Give yourself a pat on the back if you’ve reached this far! You’re doing great. In the next step, we’ll add the following methods:
- play()
- pause()
- resume()
- stop()
At this point, we need to have the ffmpeg binary in the base directory. It can be downloaded from https://ffmpeg.org/. In this case, I used the exe since I’m using a Windows machine.
Part 4: Running the Python Discord bot locally
Add the final piece of code to start the bot and it’s done:
To deploy the bot locally, activate the virtual environment and run the app.py file:
Bonus: send GIFs on start-up and print server details
In this bonus section, we will set up our bot to listen to events such as start-up. This example sends a previously downloaded GIF image to the text channel when the bot is activated:
To print server details such as owner name, the number of users, and a server id, we can add a bot command ‘where_am_i’:
This is what this will look like:
Printing server details — Image by author
You can view and clone the complete results from my Discord-Bot GitHub Repository.
That’s it! We made a Python Discord bot. Thank you for reading, and don’t hesitate to leave a reply or ask your questions in the comments section.
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Discord Bot Python Tutorial – Play Music and Send Gifs
Do you find it surprising that Discord has become well-known in the digital and business world? There are good reasons why it currently dominates the social media scene. It enhances social media interaction, chatting, gaming, or simply interacting with business organizations.
Millions of people use Discord daily, and a considerable percentage regularly automate tasks using bots. These bots are making Discord one of the best social messaging platforms for different industries.
Table of Contents
- What is Discord?
- Why is Discord Popular?
- Terms Associated With Discord
- Is Discord Free?
- What is a Discord Bot?
- Benefits of Discord Bots
- Steps to Creating a Discord Bot With Python using Nextcord.py
- Sample Codes for Discord Bots in Python
- A. Sample Codes to make Discord Bots Respond to Greetings
- B. Sample Codes to Make a Discord Bots Send Gifs
- C. Sample Codes to make Discord Bots Play Music
What is Discord?
Discord is a social application that offers free phone, video, and text communication. It is one of the most well-known social networking sites used by millions of people to communicate and hang out with their friends and neighbors
People frequently use Discord to talk about a range of subjects, such as family vacations, homework assistance, NFTs, cryptocurrencies, the Metaverse, and mental health support. Any sized group of people can call it home, but the tiniest, chattiest groups use it the most regularly.
It gives public communities the platform to interact. People have complete control over who they interact with and how they use Discord because all discussions are opt-in.
It includes servers that are exclusive and private channels where communities and friendship circles can communicate and socialize and hold events.
Discord, however, swiftly gained popularity among gamers after its initial 2015 release by Jason Citron and Stanislav Vishnevskiy. The two co-founders wanted to create a better communication tool while working in the video game industry.
Why is Discord Popular?
Even though it has been seeing yearly user growth since its launch in 2015, Discord’s popularity increased in 2018 as streaming and online gaming began to expand quickly.
Discord’s connection with Xbox was the second significant action following its launch. It was a truly great experience for users to connect their Xbox Live accounts with their Discord servers. But by 2020, everyone was familiar with Discord.
Its fast popularity is due to the convenience it provides to players and streamers worldwide. Since then, Discord has become a well-liked platform for connecting with loved ones and having simple conversations.
Discord achieved quick popularity, unlike many other similar messaging applications. Because it serves as a home for all communities and friendship groups, people adore Discord. They may be themselves there while socializing with others who appreciate the same things they do.
On Discord, conversations are stimulated by common interests from people who share a similar view on a topic. Discord provides different communication options for like minds to interact in the best way they can use to understand themselves.
Terms Associated With Discord
Discord users occasionally utilize some terminology when referring to some of the activities on the platform. Below are examples of some of these terminologies.
- Channel: Text and voice channels are servers Discord relies on to transmit information. Users can exchange photographs, upload files, and publish messages in text channels at any time for other people to see. Additionally, users can go “live” in voice channels, where they can show their screen with peers and interact through voice or video chat in real-time.
- DMs and GDMs: Users can initiate voice or video calls as well as send private messages to other users as direct messages (DM). Group Direct Messages are private and accessible only by invitation from a group member.
- Server: Discord’s spaces are called servers. Particular communities and cliques create them. A new server can be set up by any user for no cost, and they can invite their friends to join.
- Nitro: Nitro is Discord’s premium subscription service. It enables users to customize Discord Tag, use custom emotes on every server, have a higher file upload cap, and discounted Server Boosts.
- Server Boosts: Dual to Nitro, Server Boosts grant servers exclusive benefits, including more personalized emotes, improved voice and video quality, and the capacity to set a personalized invite link.
- Student Hubs: Students can choose servers for study groups or classes, connect with other verified students, and share their own servers with other students using Discord Hubs for Students.
Is Discord Free?
Discord is without communication limitations. Access to communities is unrestricted, and starting your server is also cost-free.
You’ve probably heard of Discord bots if you use the platform for business purposes. With the help of these AI-powered bots, you can carry out different tasks, such as welcoming new users or people in search of your service.
It is a helpful tactic for online marketers who are learning how to use it to their advantage. Discord bots may be the way to go if you’re searching for a distinctive and interesting approach to interacting with your community.
What is a Discord Bot?
Discord bots are top A.I.s used by marketers and business owners to perform a range of automated tasks on the server. Discord bots can manage the discussion, filter material, automatically welcome new users, and ban disruptive individuals. Some bots even add music or games to your server.
They are amiable AI that supports server management or service enhancement. Discord bots are pre-made and free to download — no computer skills necessary.
You can back up your business information that the bot emulates in a database.
MongoDB is a popular database you can use for this purpose, although storing data in MongoDB is an activity among experienced programmers coding these bots. So this may require that only top programmers handle this process.
Benefits of Discord Bots
- Developing an active community is made simpler by Discord bots.
- When you’re briefly unavailable online, it takes your place. It acquaints new players with your server and moderately satisfies some of their needs.
- You can utilize them to include games, music, memes, and other fun material.
- Discord bots help to enhance your server and foster a better community, making users stay and engage with you more.
Steps to Creating a Discord Bot With Python using Nextcord.py
First, you need to enable the bot from the Discord application. Make your Python environment function going there next. Then go to your Python environment to make it functional.
To set everything up, you do need a basic understanding of programming, although the complexity of the code may vary depending on the type of bot you’re building.
Let’s look at some of the prerequisites for getting started. You must first have a Discord account, which you undoubtedly already do. If not, visit the Discord webpage to create one at no cost. The Discord client is also available for download, and you may use it on a phone or your gaming laptop.
To start with the bots creation, let’s enable it first from the server.
- Visit the official website of Discord to register; or log in if you are an old user
- Select “New Application” and then enter a name for the program before clicking “Create.”
- Create a Bot User by visiting the “Bot” page and clicking “Add Bot.”
- To move forward, click “Yes, go ahead!”
- Check the Public Bot button.
- Do not check the OAuth2 Code button unless you’re developing a service that requires you to. If you’re unsure of its functionality, leave it unchecked.
- If you don’t already have a token, just hit the Reset button to create one. Keep this token ID safe because we’ll need it later.
So that’s it, you can log in to your newly created bot account.
Even though you created a bot user, it isn’t truly present in any servers. We need to do one more thing.
- Visit the application page, and click on your newly created bot page
- Select the “OAuth2” tab.
- To discover your CLIENT ID, locate the OAuth2 option in the menu on the left sidebar and click on it. Ensure you copy the lengthy string of numbers and paste them into the URL.
- You’ll notice a message verifying the bot’s arrival after you add it to your server. The bot icon appears on the right-hand side of your Discord application.
It’s time to finish developing your app. To test the functionality of your bot, open the Python source code.
Sample Codes for Discord Bots in Python
A. Sample Codes to make Discord Bots Respond to Greetings
B. Sample Codes to Make a Discord Bots Send Gifs
C. Sample Codes to make Discord Bots Play Music
Conclusion
Using Discord bots is a cutting-edge and effective digital marketing tactic. Discord bots make your discord server lively and active. Additionally, they operate round-the-clock.
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README.md
A simple, unintrusive musicbot written in Discord.py that utilizes YoutubeDL and ffmpeg to stream audio. Use the help command to get a list of commands!
If you just want to get up and running with the bot quickly:
- Clone this repository using the GitHub website or GitHub/git CLI.
- Install pipenv , the Python dependency manager, if necessary. Also, ensure opus and ffmpeg are installed on your machine and available in your environment. Both are used for media streaming.
- Navigate into the project directory and run pipenv install to install dependencies.
- Activate the Pipenv using pipenv shell . Run the bot using python -m musicbot .
- On first startup, a default config.toml will be generated without an API token, so the bot will abort complaining that No token has been provided. Fill your bot’s token into config.toml .
- Use something like the Discord API Permissions calculator to generate an invite link and invite your bot to your server, if necessary.
- Run the bot using python -m musicbot .
Make sure that pipenv is installed. Navigate to the project directory, and run pipenv install to install the Python dependencies.
To allow for streaming of media, make sure opus and ffmpeg are installed and in your environment.
To run the bot, activate the virtual environment with pipenv shell and then python -m musicbot to start the bot.
When you run the bot for the first time, a default configuration file will be generated called config.toml . You can enter that file and add your token, etc. The default file looks like this:
If you ever wish to restore the bot to default configuration, you can simply delete (or rename) your config file. A new one will be generated upon startup.
From the bot’s help command:
Issues and pull requests are welcomed and appreciated. I can’t guarantee that I will respond to all issues in a timely manner, but I will try my best to respond to any issues that arise.
discord-musicbot 0.0.3.dev20170604
Discord bot made with Python which is aimed to control Spotify.
Getting started
Explanations for setting up and running the bot.
Requirements
Installation
Running
If you entered wrong user credentials, you can restart the configuration as follows:
Configuration
At the first start of the bot, some configurations questions are asked to the user from command line. These are the following:
Once they’re configured, there’s no need to configure them again.
webdriver
The bot may use a chrome webdriver in order to manage the Spotify app by itself. The driver can be found here: Chrome webdriver
- Sample Codes for Discord Bots in Python