Creating a Python Discord bot to store DM messages

Other Questions Discord bot
1

Hey everyone! I’m trying to build a Discord bot using Python that can save all direct messages it receives. I’ve got some code that counts messages and logs timestamps, but I can’t figure out how to save the actual content of the DMs. Here’s what I’ve tried so far:

import asyncio
import time

async def log_message_stats():
    await client.wait_until_ready()
    global message_count

    while client.is_running():
        try:
            with open('message_log.txt', 'a') as log_file:
                log_file.write(f'Timestamp: {int(time.time())}, Messages: {message_count}\n')
            
            message_count = 0
            await asyncio.sleep(60)
        except Exception as error:
            print(f'Error occurred: {error}')
            await asyncio.sleep(60)

@client.event
async def on_message(message):
    global message_count
    message_count += 1
    
client.loop.create_task(log_message_stats())

This code tracks the number of messages and when they were sent, but it doesn’t save the actual message content. How can I modify it to store the full text of DMs sent to the bot? Any help would be appreciated!

2

I’ve dealt with similar challenges in my Discord bot projects. One approach that worked well for me was using a database instead of text files for storing messages. SQLite is lightweight and easy to integrate with Python.

Here’s a basic setup I used:

import sqlite3

conn = sqlite3.connect('messages.db')
c = conn.cursor()

c.execute('''CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS messages
             (timestamp INTEGER, author TEXT, content TEXT)''')

@client.event
async def on_message(message):
    if isinstance(message.channel, discord.DMChannel):
        c.execute("INSERT INTO messages VALUES (?, ?, ?)",
                  (int(time.time()), str(message.author), message.content))
        conn.commit()

This stores each DM with a timestamp, author, and content. You can easily query the database later to retrieve messages. Remember to close the connection when your bot shuts down.

3

I’ve implemented a similar feature in one of my Discord bots. Instead of using text files, I found it more efficient to use a JSON-based approach. Here’s a snippet that might help:

import json
from datetime import datetime

@client.event
async def on_message(message):
    if isinstance(message.channel, discord.DMChannel):
        with open('dm_messages.json', 'a+') as f:
            f.seek(0)
            try:
                data = json.load(f)
            except json.JSONDecodeError:
                data = []
            
            data.append({
                'timestamp': datetime.now().isoformat(),
                'author': str(message.author),
                'content': message.content
            })
            
            f.seek(0)
            f.truncate()
            json.dump(data, f, indent=4)

This approach stores each DM as a JSON object, making it easier to process and analyze the data later. It’s also more flexible if you need to add more fields in the future.

4

hey there! i’ve worked on similar projects before. to save dm content, you’ll wanna modify your on_message function. try something like this:

if isinstance(message.channel, discord.DMChannel):
with open(‘dm_log.txt’, ‘a’) as f:
f.write(f’{message.author}: {message.content}\n’)

this should log the sender and content of each dm. hope it helps!