How can I update a Discord bot's last message using a command?

Other Questions Discord bot
1

I’m trying to create a Discord bot that can modify its own messages when users run specific commands. The bot I’m building is for managing player reservations in strategy games we play together.

Here’s what I want to happen: The bot posts a message showing all available countries. When someone types a command like !claim Germany, the bot should update that original message to show that Germany is now taken by that user.

The tricky part is that I delete and recreate the main message regularly, so the message ID keeps changing. I can’t just hardcode a message ID because it won’t stay the same.

I’ve been trying to use fetch_message() but that requires knowing the exact message ID ahead of time. Is there a way to make the bot remember which message it should edit, or maybe find its most recent message in the channel?

Here’s what I have so far:

import discord
from discord.ext import commands

bot = commands.Bot(command_prefix='$', intents=discord.Intents.all())

@bot.event
async def on_ready():
    print("Bot is online")

@bot.command()
async def start_game(ctx):
    game_msg = await ctx.send("Available Nations: France, Germany, Russia")

@bot.command()
async def claim(ctx, nation):
    # Need to find and edit the game message here
    # How do I get the message without hardcoding the ID?
    pass

Any ideas on how to track which message needs updating?

2

I’ve had good luck with a class that manages game state and message references. When your bot starts up, make a dictionary that maps channel IDs to their message objects:

class GameManager:
    def __init__(self):
        self.active_games = {}  # channel_id: message_object
    
    async def update_game_message(self, channel_id, new_content):
        if channel_id in self.active_games:
            await self.active_games[channel_id].edit(content=new_content)

This beats searching through message history since you keep direct references to the actual messages. Just update the dictionary entry when you recreate a message. I use this for tournament brackets and it handles the dynamic ID issue without constantly fetching message history.

3

Try ctx.channel.history() to grab the bot’s last message instead of storing IDs. Something like:

async for message in ctx.channel.history(limit=50):
    if message.author == bot.user:
        await message.edit(content="new content")
        break

This way you don’t need to worry about changing message IDs when you recreate stuff.

4

I faced a similar issue while developing a Discord bot for event coordination. One effective method is to store the message ID in a variable when you initially post the message. For instance, during your start_game() function, you can save the message ID like this: game_message_id = game_msg.id. Then, in your claim() function, you can retrieve and edit the message using await ctx.channel.fetch_message(game_message_id). If you want persistence across bot restarts, consider storing the IDs in a JSON file or a database. This way, you can update the stored ID anytime you recreate the message. Keeping track of pinned messages as a fallback can also be helpful, although it can clutter the channel if there are many pins.