How to delete messages and log them back in another channel

Question

I'm wondering how I could delete messages using a command like !clear [number] and have those messages fetched back to a channel including:

The user ID who used the command to delete the message
The user ID of who said the deleted message(s)
The content of the message(s)
The channel it has been deleted from
The timestamp of the message

All this stuff in a discord embed.
I'm relatively new to coding, and I'm developing this bot for a server with 40,000 people and we need to keep logs of all deleted messages.

Please, someone, help me out. I would greatly appreciate it :D. If needed I can explain in further detail if you still aren't sure of what I'm looking to do with this bot :D

Federico Grandi Federico Grandi · Accepted Answer · 2018-09-30T19:08:42

To delete messages with a command, you have to use TextChannel.bulkDelete(), in this case maybe after fetching the messages via TextChannel.fetchMessages().
To "log" them, you may want to build a RichEmbed and put your info in the fields.
I would try something like this:

// ASSUMPTIONS:
// logs = the TextChannel in wich you want the embed to be sent
// trigger = the Messages that triggered the command
// 
// This is just a sample implementation, it could contain errors or might not be the fastest
// Its aim is not to make it for you, but to give you a model

async function clear(n = 1, logs, trigger) {
  let {channel: source, author} = trigger;
  if (n < 1 || !logs || !source) throw new Error("One of the arguments was wrong.");

  let coll = await source.fetchMessages({ limit: n }), // get the messages
    arr = coll.array(),
    collected = [],
    embeds = [];

  // create groups of 25 messages, the field limit for a RichEmbed
  let index = 0;
  for (let i = 0; i < arr.length; i += 25) {
    collected.push([]);
    for (let m = i; m < i + 25; m++)
      if (arr[m]) collected[index].push(arr[m]);
    index++;
  }

  // for every group of messages, create an embed
  // I used some sample titles that you can obviously modify
  for (let i = 0; i < collected.length; i++) {
    let embed = new Discord.RichEmbed()
      .setTitle(`Channel cleaning${collected.length > 1 ? ` - Part ${i+1}` : ""}`)
      .setDescription(`Deleted from ${source}`)
      .setAuthor(`${author.tag} (${author.id})`, author.displayAvatarURL)
      .setTimestamp(trigger.editedAt ? trigger.editedAt : trigger.createdAt),
      group = collected[i];
    for (let msg of group) {
      let a = `${msg.author.tag} (${msg.author.id}) at ${msg.editedAt ? msg.editedAt : msg.createdAt}`,
        c = msg.content.length > 1024 ? msg.content.substring(0, msg.content.length - 3) + '...' : msg.content;
      embed.addField(a, c);
    }
    embeds.push(embed);
  }

  // once the embeds are ready, you can send them
  source.bulkDelete(coll).then(async () => {
    for (let embed of embeds) await source.send({embed});
  }).catch(console.error);
}

// this is a REALLY basic command implementation, please DO NOT use this as yours
client.on('message', async msg => {
  let command = 'clear ';
  if (msg.content.startsWith(command)) {
    let args = msg.content.substring(command.length).split(' ');
    if (isNaN(args[0]) || parseInt(args[0]) < 1) msg.reply(`\`${args[0]}\` is not a valid number.`);
    else {
      await msg.delete(); // delete your message first
      let logs; // store your channel here
      clear(parseInt(args[0]), logs, msg);
    }
  }
});

Note: the highlighting for this kind of stuff, with a lot of backtick strings and objects, is pretty bad. I suggest reading the code in another editor or you might end up not understanding anything

How to delete messages and log them back in another channel

1 Answers