Allie Bot

Inspiration

I use Discord a lot (which is another communication software platform, it's extremely similar to Slack). When I'm at home, in my second monitor, I always have Discord open. More specifically, my own personal Discord workspace (think about if you have your own Slack, where you were the only member in it). I use it to write little reminders for myself, links to refer to later, a list of reminders of things to do, I use it to transfer files between my PC which I can open on my laptop later, etc. - I wanted to make a bot that could improve "quality of life", if you will. Sort of like a personal assistant.

I wanted to make an "improving quality of life" bot, sort of like a personal assistant where you could @ the bot, give it a command, and it would execute it for you. The idea was I could get all of these done from the comfort of that text box, no need to open anything else. Some features / commands I wanted to implement were:

What it does

You could @ the bot name and based on certain command keywords you could have the bot do different tasks, all from the comfort of that Discord text box; no need to open anything else. Some features / commands I wanted to implement were:

Basic arithmetic Example: @Allie_Bot calculate 2047 / 31

Set reminders Example: @Allie_Bot remindme 20min take pizza out of oven (and then in 20 minutes, you would be pinged)

Add calendar events to Google Calander Example: @Allie_Bot calendar Thursday September 20 2019 12:00-15:00 swimming lessons (and it would add this event to your calendar)

Post top 5 current hottest posts of a subreddit Example: @Allie_Bot reddit r/memes (next 5 messages are links to the current top 5 hottest posts)

Perform Google searches for you Example: @Allie_Bot search apples (returns a link to the first link you would normally get if you were to type apples into a search engine)

How I built it

Built in Java, using the Java Discord API (JDA).

Challenges I ran into

I think I bit off way more than I can chew. I was familiar with the Java Discord API, but trying to learn how to use the Reddit API, the Google Calendar API, the DuckDuckGo API, was extremely overwhelming. I wasn't able to implement a lot of my planned features.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Got my bot up and running. It can do basic arithmetic and can do "true randomness" tasks - such as coinflips and dice rolls.

What I learned

I learned I just need to work harder for the things I want to achieve. Can't go into Hack the North 2019 being satisfied with what I already know - I need to plan much better in advance so I can do better in my future events.

What's next for Allie Bot

Get all my planned features to work. Then add more, and to never settle for mediocrity. Even the most minor task such as finding out the contents of a certain cell in a certain Google Sheet, I want to be able to retrieve it.

Built With

• discord
• java
• jda