Having a bot send an embed using a player command

Question

I once again need help with creating my discord bot. I am trying to have a bot send an embed using a command. My code is too complex to send through this message because of all of the extra functions that i have in that effect the command, so I'm just going to say what the command should look like;

/embed [title]; [description]

and before the title and description would be would be

setAuthor(`${message.author.username}`, message.author.displayAvatarURL)

so the author of the embed would show up. Any idea on how to do this?

Blundering Philosopher Blundering Philosopher · Accepted Answer · 2018-01-31T10:00:23

First, here is how you can use regex to parse text in a command:

case /^\/embed \[[\w ]+\]; \[[\w ]+\]$/.test(command):
    sendEmbed(message);
    break;

This Regular Expression (/^\/embed \[[\w ]+\]; \[[\w ]+\]$/) can be broken down as follows:

the beginning /^ and end $/ pieces mean we're trying to match an entire string / command.
/embed matches the exact text "embed"
\[[\w ]+\] is used for the title and for the description, and matches text within square brackets "[]", where the text is letters (uppercase or lowercase), numbers, underscore, or a space. If you need more characters like "!" or "-", I can show you how to add those.
.test(command) is testing that the Regular Expression matches the text from the command, and returns a boolean (true / false).

So now you put that regex checking code in your message / command listener and then call your send embed function (I named it sendEmbed) like this:

// set message listener 
client.on('message', message => {
    let command = message.content;

    // match commands like /embed [title]; [description]
    // first \w+ is for the title, 2nd is for description
    if ( /^\/embed \[[\w ]+\]; \[[\w ]+\]$/.test(command) )
        sendEmbed(message);
});

function sendEmbed(message) {
    let command = message.content;
    let channel = message.channel;
    let author = message.author;

    // get title string coordinates in command
    let titleStart = command.indexOf('[');
    let titleEnd = command.indexOf(']');
    let title = command.substr(titleStart + 1, titleEnd - titleStart - 1);

    // get description string coordinates in command
    // -> (start after +1 so we don't count '[' or ']' twice)
    let descStart = command.indexOf('[', titleStart + 1);
    let descEnd = command.indexOf(']', titleEnd + 1);
    let description = command.substr(descStart + 1, descEnd - descStart - 1);

    // next create rich embed
    let embed = new Discord.RichEmbed({
        title: title,
        description: description
    });

    // set author based of passed-in message
    embed.setAuthor(author.username, author.displayAvatarURL);

    // send embed to channel
    channel.send(embed);
}

Let me know if you have questions!

Update Jan 2021

In the latest version of Discord js (as of Jan 2021), you'll have to create an embed like this:

const embed = new MessageEmbed()
  .setTitle(title)
  .setDescription(description)
  .setAuthor(author.username, author.displayAvatarURL);

See example Embed in docs here. Everything else should be the same.

Having a bot send an embed using a player command

1 Answers