How to make a Discord bot respond to incomplete commands?

Other Questions Discord bot
1

Hey everyone! I’m working on a Discord bot and I’ve hit a snag. I want the bot to be smart enough to handle incomplete commands. Here’s what I’m trying to do:

When a user types //changelogs followed by a number, the bot should show the changelog for that specific version. But if they just type //changelogs without a number, I want the bot to list all available changelog versions.

I’m not sure how to set this up. Should I use if-else statements? Or is there a better way to handle partial commands? Any tips or code examples would be super helpful!

Thanks in advance for your help. I’m excited to make this bot more user-friendly!

2

hey mate, u could use regex to check if a number follows //changelogs. if it matches, show that version. if not, list all. something like:

if (message.match(/^//changelogs\s+\d+$/)) {
// show specific version
} else if (message === ‘//changelogs’) {
// list all versions
}

hope this helps!

3

From my experience, implementing command arguments with optional parameters is a solid approach for handling incomplete commands. You could structure your code like this:

function handleChangelogs(args) {
if (args.length > 0 && !isNaN(args[0])) {
return showSpecificChangelog(args[0]);
} else {
return listAllChangelogs();
}
}

Then, in your message handler:

if (message.content.startsWith(‘//changelogs’)) {
const args = message.content.slice(‘//changelogs’.length).trim().split(/ +/);
const response = handleChangelogs(args);
message.channel.send(response);
}

This approach is flexible and can be easily extended for other commands with optional parameters. It’s also more maintainable than complex if-else structures or regex matching.

4

I’ve dealt with a similar issue in my Discord bot projects. One approach that’s worked well for me is using command arguments. You can set up your command handler to parse the message content after the command prefix. Here’s a basic example:

if (message.content.startsWith('//changelogs')) {
  const args = message.content.split(' ');
  if (args.length > 1 && !isNaN(args[1])) {
    // Show specific changelog for the version number in args[1]
  } else {
    // List all available changelog versions
  }
}

This way, you can easily check if a version number was provided and act accordingly. It’s flexible and can be extended for more complex command structures too. Just remember to add error handling for invalid inputs!