I want to create a Discord bot command that can fetch player statistics from an external data source. My server tracks game hours for each player and this information is saved in both a MySQL database and Google Sheets.
The command should work like this:
!hours [PlayerID]
When someone types this command, I want the bot to:
- Take the PlayerID from the command
- Search for that ID in the database or spreadsheet
- Get all the data from that player’s record
- Send back a nice formatted embed with their statistics
The player data includes things like total hours played, last login date, and other game stats. Is it possible to connect Discord.py with these data sources? Which method would be better - connecting directly to MySQL or using Google Sheets API?
I’m looking for guidance on how to set this up. Thanks for any help you can provide!
both work fine - just depends what u’ve got. if mysql’s already running, stick with it. but google sheets api is way easier for beginners. i use gspread for sheets integration - super straightforward. just cache your data locally or you’ll hit api limits fast. mysql takes more setup but it’s faster.
I’ve built several Discord bots with database integration - definitely go with MySQL for this. The performance difference is huge when you’re constantly querying player stats. I use mysql-connector-python and it works great with discord.py. For commands, create an async function that handles the database query and formats everything into a discord.Embed. Make sure you handle errors properly - catch cases where PlayerID doesn’t exist and give users a friendly message. Here’s what I learned the hard way: use connection pooling instead of creating new connections for each command. Otherwise you’ll hit connection limits when things get busy. Also throw a cooldown decorator on there to prevent spam queries from killing your database. Google Sheets API has rate limits and it’s slow as hell, so unless you really need manual spreadsheet editing, MySQL will crush it performance-wise for Discord bots.
Just worked with both approaches and found a solid middle ground. If you’re already syncing to Google Sheets, pull from Sheets periodically and cache everything locally in SQLite for bot queries. You get easy data management through Sheets plus fast local queries for Discord commands.
For implementation, asyncio with aiohttp handles Sheets API calls well. Set up a background task to refresh your local cache every few minutes. Error handling is crucial - always have fallback responses ready because external APIs will break eventually. Also add fuzzy matching for player names since users never type exact PlayerIDs.
Performance-wise: high command volume = go direct database. Smaller servers = Sheets approach works fine and it’s way easier to maintain.