arikawa

README

arikawa

A Golang library for the Discord API.

Examples

Simple

Simple bot example without any state. All it does is logging messages sent into the console. Run with BOT_TOKEN="TOKEN" go run .

Undeleter

A slightly more complicated example. This bot uses a local state to cache everything, including messages. It detects when someone deletes a message, logging the content into the console.

This example demonstrates the PreHandler feature of this library. PreHandler calls all handlers that are registered (separately from session), calling them before the state is updated.

Advanced Bot

A pretty complicated example demonstrating the reflect-based command router that's built-in. The router turns exported struct methods into commands, its arguments into command arguments, and more.

The library has a pretty detailed documentation available in GoDoc Reference.

Comparison: Why not discordgo?

Discordgo is great. It's the first library that I used when I was learning Go. Though there are some things that I disagree on. Here are some ways that this library is different:

• Better package structure: this library divides the Discord library up into smaller packages.
• Cleaner API/Gateway structure separation: this library separates fields that would only appear in Gateway events, so to not cause confusion.
• Automatic un-pagination: this library automatically un-paginates endpoints that would otherwise not return everything fully.
• Flexible underlying abstractions: this library allows plugging in different JSON and Websocket implementations, as well as direct access to the HTTP client.
• Flexible API abstractions: because packages are separated, the developer could choose to use a lower level package (such as gateway) or a higher level package (such as state).
• Pre-handlers in the state: this allows the developers to access items from the state storage before they're removed.
• Pluggable state storages: although only having a default state storage in the library, it is abstracted with an interface, making it possible to implement a custom remote or local state storage.
• REST-updated state: this library will call the REST API if it can't find things in the state, which is useful for keeping it updated.
• No code generation: just so the library is a lot easier to maintain.

You-should-knows

• The bot will fatally exit if it fails to reconnect to the Gateway after a certain amount of times. This is changeable in gateway.WSFatal, or (*Gateway).FatalLog.
• The bot will error out if the initial connection fails. However, reconnections will be retried forever until it succeeds. This is no longer true. The bot will retry until WSRetries is reached, then the error will go to (*Gateway).FatalError or (*Gateway).Wait().

Testing

The package includes integration tests that require $BOT_TOKEN. To run these tests, do

export BOT_TOKEN="<BOT_TOKEN>"
go test -tags integration ./...

Documentation

Overview

Package arikawa contains a set of modular packages that allows you to make a Discord bot or any type of session (OAuth unsupported).

Session

Package session is the most simple abstraction, which combines the API package and the Gateway websocket package together into one. This could be used for minimal bots that only use gateway events and such.

State

Package state abstracts on top of session and provides a local cache of API calls and events. Bots that either don't need a command router or already has its own should use this package.

Bot

Package bot abstracts on top of state and provides a command router based on Go code. This is similar to discord.py's API, only it's Go and there's no optional arguments (yet, although it could be worked around). Most bots are recommended to use this package, as it's the easiest way to make a bot.

Voice

Package voice provides an abstraction on top of State and adds voice support. This allows bots to join voice channels and talk. The package uses an io.Writer approach rather than a channel, contrary to other Discord libraries.