Discord Bot Detecting Empty Messages Unexpectedly

Other Questions Discord bot
1

I’m having trouble with my Discord bot written in Python. For some reason, it’s saying messages are empty even when they contain commands. I’ve tried to debug it by adding extra print statements, but no luck so far. Here’s a snippet of my code:

@bot.event
async def on_message(msg):
    if msg.author == bot.user:
        return

    if not msg.content:
        print(f'Empty message from {msg.author.id}')
        return

    msg_list = [msg]
    if msg.reference:
        replied_msg = await msg.channel.fetch_message(msg.reference.message_id)
        if replied_msg.author == bot.user and replied_msg.content.startswith('User ID: '):
            msg_list.insert(0, replied_msg)

    for message in msg_list:
        print(f'Got message: {message.content} from {message.author.id}')

        if message.content.startswith('!approve'):
            with open('approved.json', 'a') as f:
                json.dump(data.pop(0), f, indent=2)
            await send_next_item()
            await message.channel.send('Approved!')
            print('User approved the item')

        elif message.content.startswith('!reject'):
            with open('rejected.json', 'a') as f:
                json.dump(data.pop(0), f, indent=2)
            await send_next_item()
            await message.channel.send('Rejected!')
            print('User rejected the item')

Any ideas on why it might be detecting empty messages when there are actually commands?

2

hmm, could be a permissions issue. check if ur bot has the right perms to read messages. also, maybe try printing the raw message content before processing to see what’s actually coming through. sometimes hidden characters can mess things up. good luck debugging!

3

Have you considered the possibility of a race condition? Sometimes, if the bot processes messages too quickly, it might try to access the content before it’s fully loaded. Try adding a small delay before processing the message:

import asyncio

@bot.event
async def on_message(msg):
    await asyncio.sleep(0.1)  # Wait 100ms
    if not msg.content:
        print(f'Empty message from {msg.author.id}')
        return

    # Rest of your code...

This slight delay might give Discord enough time to fully populate the message object. Also, double-check your bot’s intents configuration in your bot setup code. You might need to explicitly enable message content intent:

intents = discord.Intents.default()
intents.message_content = True
bot = commands.Bot(command_prefix='!', intents=intents)

These changes could potentially resolve your empty message issue.

4

I’ve run into similar issues before, and it can be frustrating. One thing that helped me was adding a debug print statement right after receiving the message, before any processing. Something like:

print(f’Raw message content: {msg.content!r}')

This will show you exactly what the bot is receiving, including any whitespace or hidden characters. It’s possible that Discord is sending some non-printable characters that are making the message appear empty.

Another thing to check is the message type. Discord has different types of messages (like system messages) that might not have content in the way you expect. You could add:

print(f’Message type: {msg.type}')

to see if you’re dealing with regular user messages or something else.

Lastly, make sure your bot’s intents are set up correctly. If you’re not receiving message content, you might need to enable the message content intent. Hope this helps!