Introduction#
Throughout this guide you will see links like “Read the docs” which go to the Hikari docs, Lightbulb docs or other documentation. I try to put them in useful places where people might need them to modify their code to suit a different purpose.
This guide was last updated on 17 August 2022
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What does this guide cover?#
Commands & command options (text-based prefix & slash)
Lightbulb extensions & plugins
Message components (specifically select menus)
Command checks & cooldowns
Basic error handling
Making your Discord Bot Application#
Carberra Tutorials made a video on Creating a bot on the Developer Portal which you can follow to do this:
Setting up the files#
Make a folder for your bot:
mkdir my_bot
cd my_bot
Then, make 3 files:
bot.py
requirements.txt
.env
After all that, your file structure should look like this:
my_bot
│ bot.py
│ requirements.txt
│ .env
Make a virtual environment#
This is optional, but recommended.
Windows:
python -m venv .venv
.\.venv\Scripts\activate
Linux:
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
You’ll need to activate this venv when running your bot.
Read more about virtual environments here: https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/venv.html.
Installing requirements#
In requirements.txt
paste the following
hikari[speedups]>=2.0.0.dev111
hikari-lightbulb>=2.2.4
hikari-miru>=1.1.2
python-dotenv>=0.21.0
And then run
python -m pip install -r requirements.txt
What have we just installed?#
Hikari - a “sane Python framework for writing modern Discord bots”
Lightbulb - a “simple and easy to use command framework for Hikari”
Miru - an “optional component handler for Hikari”
So now, let’s begin!