How to Send Direct Messages to Mentioned Users with Python Discord Bot

[DancingButterfly]

I need help creating a Discord bot feature where the bot can send private messages to users that get tagged. When someone with the right permissions writes !pm @username, I want the bot to automatically send a direct message to that mentioned user.

Here’s what I have so far but it’s not working correctly:

@bot.event
async def on_message(msg):
    if msg.content.startswith('!pm'):
        dm_text = 'You received a private message from the bot'
        await bot.send_message(msg.author, dm_text)

The problem is that this code sends the DM back to the person who typed the command instead of sending it to the user they mentioned. How can I modify this to detect the mentioned user and send the message to them instead? I’m pretty new to Discord bot development so any help would be appreciated.

[henryg]

Adding to lucask’s point - check permissions first before the dm command. Use if msg.author.guild_permissions.manage_messages: and wrap it in try/except since some users block bot DMs and it’ll error out.

[JessicaDream12]

You should validate the command format first. I’ve seen users type !pm without mentioning anyone, which crashes the bot when it tries to access msg.mentions[0] on an empty list. Just add a length check like if len(msg.mentions) > 0: before you do anything else. And don’t forget await bot.process_commands(msg) at the end of your on_message event - without it, your other commands won’t work since on_message overrides the default processing.

[lucask]

Your code isn’t extracting the mentioned user from the message. You need to parse the mentions from the message object. Here’s the fix:

@bot.event
async def on_message(msg):
    if msg.content.startswith('!pm') and msg.mentions:
        mentioned_user = msg.mentions[0]
        dm_text = 'You received a private message from the bot'
        await mentioned_user.send(dm_text)

The main change: use msg.mentions[0] to grab the first mentioned user, then call mentioned_user.send() instead of sending to msg.author. Also, bot.send_message() is deprecated in newer discord.py versions - user.send() is the way to go now. Don’t forget error handling for when users have DMs disabled or no one gets mentioned.