I’m developing a music bot for Discord using discord.py, and I need guidance on making it automatically switch to the next song after one finishes.
I’m a beginner with Python and working on my first Discord bot. Right now, my bot can play a single song without any issues, but I would like it to seamlessly continue to the next track once the current one is done.
Here’s the code I have that successfully plays a single song:
audio_connection.play(discord.FFmpegPCMAudio(executable="/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg", source=track_name + ".mp3"))
await ctx.send(f"Now playing: {track_name}")
This part is functioning correctly. However, I’m struggling to find a reliable way to detect when a song finishes and initiate the next track in the queue. I’ve explored multiple methods, but none have yielded the desired results.
What’s the best approach to achieve automatic song queuing? Should I use event callbacks, or is there a different method I should consider?
To implement automatic song queuing in your Discord bot, utilize the after parameter of the play() method. When I developed my music bot, I employed a queue system using a list and a callback function triggered upon song completion. Structure your code like this: audio_connection.play(discord.FFmpegPCMAudio(...), after=lambda e: self.play_next_song(ctx)). In your play_next_song method, manage the queue carefully by ensuring there are songs left to play, and consider adding error handling to address potential issues. Tracking the current play state with a boolean variable can also help avoid conflicts when user requests are made.
One thing that caught me off guard when implementing this was managing the voice client state properly. Make sure you’re checking if the bot is still connected to the voice channel before attempting to play the next song in your callback function. I ran into situations where users would disconnect the bot manually but the queue would still try to continue, causing crashes. Also worth noting that you’ll want to implement some kind of queue management commands so users can see what’s coming up next or skip songs. The basic structure with the after parameter works well, but you might also want to add a small delay in your callback to avoid any potential race conditions with the audio finishing.
yeah the after callback is definetly the way to go but dont forget to handle errors properly in that callback function. i had issues where if one song failed the whole queue would break. also make sure your queue is thread-safe if your doing async stuff, learned that the hard way lol