I'm a relatively experienced developer (graduated recently), trying to get back into discord bots after I made a few a couple of years ago.

I've been following the guide on discordjs.guide, but even with the basic "hello world" style program, I am already stuck.

The program gives no errors when running, but no interactions e through in the console.

• When I start the script, the bot switches to "online." Curiously, the bot does not switch back to "offline" until I regenerate the token. Not sure if that is related.
• I've verified process.env.BOT_TOKEN is the correct value.
• I've confirmed client.login runs successfully.
• I've tried DMing the bot directly
• I've tried sending messages on guild channels
• I've tried @ing the bot

Is there something super obvious I'm not understanding/seeing? Otherwise, what else should I try as a troubleshooting step?

const { Client, Intents } = require('discord.js');

const client = new Client({ intents: [Intents.FLAGS.GUILDS] });

client.once('ready', () => {
    console.log('Ready!');
});

client.on('interactionCreate', interaction => {
    console.log(interaction);
});

client.login(process.env.BOT_TOKEN);

package.json:

{
    "name": "timebot",
    "version": "1.0.0",
    "description": "",
    "main": "start.js",
    "scripts": {
        "start": "node -r dotenv/config start.js dotenv_config_path=secrets.env",
        "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
    },
    "keywords": [],
    "author": "",
    "license": "ISC",
    "dependencies": {
        "discord.js": "^13.1.0",
        "dotenv": "^10.0.0"
    }
}

I'm a relatively experienced developer (graduated recently), trying to get back into discord bots after I made a few a couple of years ago.

I've been following the guide on discordjs.guide, but even with the basic "hello world" style program, I am already stuck.

The program gives no errors when running, but no interactions e through in the console.

• When I start the script, the bot switches to "online." Curiously, the bot does not switch back to "offline" until I regenerate the token. Not sure if that is related.
• I've verified process.env.BOT_TOKEN is the correct value.
• I've confirmed client.login runs successfully.
• I've tried DMing the bot directly
• I've tried sending messages on guild channels
• I've tried @ing the bot

Is there something super obvious I'm not understanding/seeing? Otherwise, what else should I try as a troubleshooting step?

const { Client, Intents } = require('discord.js');

const client = new Client({ intents: [Intents.FLAGS.GUILDS] });

client.once('ready', () => {
    console.log('Ready!');
});

client.on('interactionCreate', interaction => {
    console.log(interaction);
});

client.login(process.env.BOT_TOKEN);

package.json:

{
    "name": "timebot",
    "version": "1.0.0",
    "description": "",
    "main": "start.js",
    "scripts": {
        "start": "node -r dotenv/config start.js dotenv_config_path=secrets.env",
        "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
    },
    "keywords": [],
    "author": "",
    "license": "ISC",
    "dependencies": {
        "discord.js": "^13.1.0",
        "dotenv": "^10.0.0"
    }
}

• javascript
• node.js
• discord
• discord.js

1 Answer 1

Turns out, messages are not classified as "interactions" by discord.js. Additionally, you have to specify the intent to listen for messages, otherwise, the event won't be passed to your bot. Here is the revised code with those two critical changes:

const { Client, Intents } = require('discord.js');

const client = new Client({ intents: [Intents.FLAGS.GUILDS, Intents.FLAGS.GUILD_MESSAGES, Intents.FLAGS.DIRECT_MESSAGES] });

client.once('ready', () => {
    console.log('Ready!');
});

client.on('interactionCreate', interaction => {
    console.log(interaction);
});

client.on("messageCreate", message => {
    console.log(message);
});

client.login(process.env.BOT_TOKEN);