Cutie Hack Discord Bot: DogFriendBot

Inspiration

I was inspired to make this Discord bot from two of the workshops I attended today being Intro to Python and Intro to Discord Bots. I felt like this was a decently sized project I could tackle through the day and found it was possible to use python to make a Discord bot through PyCharm as I set it up correctly. As I was making it, I tried to keep the theme of Cutie Hack "Better Together" so I wanted to have the Discord bot give you someone's name in the server that you can connect with plus a few extra features. Finally I made it dog themed to make it even more friendly.

What it does

The Discord bot has three main functions. The first and most important is that if you type "NewFriend!" in the messaging bar, it will provide you with a name from the people in the server that you can start to connect with. The second feature is that if a message has the word "encouragement" in it, the bot with give you some words of encouragement, one of three random phrases. Finally, if you type "Dog!" in the messaging bar, the bot will post a random image of a dog.

How I built it

I used PyCharm and the language Python in order to construct my Discord bot. I followed what I learned from the workshops today and some online tutorials in order to get the basis for what I wanted to do with the bot. I followed the standard set up but then used my problem solving abilities to create the commands for the bot such as the NewFriend! and Dog! options.

Challenges I ran into

Some of the challenges I ran into was that I needed to get a full list of the names from the Discord server into a list but the program wasn't getting them from Discord, only the bot's name. I searched for a solution and learned more about how scripting Discord bots worked and eventually arrived at a solution, changing some parts in order to accommodate the recent changes Discord bots had.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I am proud that in the end, the Discord bot accomplished what I wanted it to do. It can give the names of anyone in the Discord server so you have someone new to connect with. My words of encouragement and dog pictures also worked fantastically!

What we learned

I learned a lot about the basics of making Discord bots and about coding in Python because this is my first day learning and coding in the language. I am really glad to have both of these in my skill set and am excited to build upon them moving forward!

What's next for Cutie Hack Discord Bot: DogFriendBot

I will probably try to add more features and message commands to my bot and even try to branch out more with it performing more complex tasks and actions like messaging the person who's name was chosen and asking them if they want to contact the person who initially but in the NewFriend! command.