CareBot

This is a simple Discord bot that can help you with your daily self-care journey!

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CareBot!

This is a simple Discord bot that can help you with your daily self-care journey!

Introduction

Why CareBot? We came up with this idea from one of our university's orientation training sessions: taking care of oneself while caring for other mentees. Although there are a lot of resources available online when it comes to self-care methods, sometimes it is difficult to come up with what we need at the moment and we are unsure of what to do. We hope that CareBot will reduce the need to tediously search for resources and remind the users of the possible ways they can take care of themselves, with 4 response options which are simple to use.

How did we build this bot? We used Node.js, discord.js v13 and Heroku CLI to build and successfully run the bot 24/7.

How to CareBot? Get started

First, if you haven't already, make a discord account. (it's free!) Follow the steps after you click on this link.

Once you've made an account, create your private server (or ANY server that you have permission to invite the bot works too) and click on this link to invite the bot. You're all set and you are now ready to use the bot!

-help command

The classic -help command will guide you through all the commands the bot can offer you. Although there are only two commands, we are planning to expand the command scope and add more content to the bot in the near future.

-init command

This is where all the fun begins! The commands are very straightforward, and you will have no trouble navigating through all the tips :)

When you initialize the bot with -init, it will create a private channel only for you and the bot (and potentially the moderators who have permission to see the channel). Once the bot sends you a message in that private channel, you will have 4 options available for you to respond: "yes", "no", "ok" and "stop". Simply type your response in the chat and the bot will take care of the rest!

We have spent the majority of our time gathering the information and coming up with the bot's responses, but we realize it is far from complete. If you have any other suggestions, please feel free to let us know!

Closing remarks

Challenges we ran into The biggest challenge we faced was learning about the recent update to discord.js. We were already familiar with the previous version (discord.js v12), but as a result of the update, we had to spend some time learning new commands as well as some big changes to the existing code structure (the main one being Gateway Intents, which are marked as required as of the v13 update).

Other minor challenges include coming up with some new ideas for the bot command structure, preventative measures for potential spamming, and dealing with an outdated version of Node.js on the Heroku server (discord.js v13 update now requires Node.js v16.6 or higher).

Accomplishments that we are proud of! The fact that we built a discord bot under strict time constraints, in fact less than two weeks to learn discord.js v13, come up with an idea and finish off with a fully-functioning self-care bot!

What we learned

  • Time management skills with proper planning
  • New discord.js v13 features
  • Basic structure for the command handler
  • Building and deploying the application using Heroku CLI

Next steps for CareBot! We are planning to add more content to the existing self-care methods, such as personal hygiene and hobbies. Moreover, there are tons of possibilities for more commands, as the code is very flexible to all the changes; we are currently brainstorming possible new commands.

Thank you so much for using CareBot! We hope you have a wonderful day :)

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