<h1>How to Write a Discord Bot in Rust</h1>
Discord is an in­stant mes­sage plat­form with more than 150 mil­lion monthly ac­tive users. The main ap­peal seems to a com­bi­na­tion of the wide reach that plat­forms like StackOverﬂow have, as well as the in­stant de­liv­ery of the in­stant mes­sag­ing con­cept. One of the best fea­tures of Discord is it’s seem­ingly un­lim­ited hack­a­bil­ity of the plat­form via it’s “Bot” sys­tem. The Bot sys­tem al­lows de­vel­op­ers to add func­tion­al­ity to Discord com­mu­ni­ties by writ­ing soft­ware that in­ter­faces in a sim­i­lar way that peo­ple do. I want to give you an in­tro­duc­tion on how to do that in Rust.
<img src="/images/flat_ferris.png" alt="A Flat Render of Rust&#x27;s Mascot, Ferris">
<h2>Interaction</h2>
Most in­ter­ac­tion with Discord bots hap­pens via com­mands, not dis­sim­i­lar to ter­mi­nal ap­pli­ca­tions. Commands may look like <code>!play Eat it by Weird Al</code>.
<img src="/images/ping_pong.png" alt="Ping! Pong!">
The bot we are go­ing to make now will sim­ply re­spond to <code>!ping</code> with “Pong!”.
<h2>Template</h2>
<img src="https://github.com/elijah-potter/discord-bot-template" alt="cargo generator template">
<h2>Setup the Project</h2>
Using a func­tion­ing Rust en­vi­ron­ment, use cargo to cre­ate a new pro­ject. E.g:
<pre><code class="hljs language-bash">cargo new tutorial-bot
</code></pre>
Next, we have to add <a href="https://github.com/serenity-rs/serenity">Serenity</a>, the li­brary for cre­at­ing Discord bots in Rust. We also have to drop in Tokio, be­cause Serenity takes ad­van­tage of it’s async run­time.
You can do this ei­ther via cargo-edit:
<pre><code class="hljs language-bash">cargo add serenity
cargo add tokio --features full
</code></pre>
or by just adding them to Cargo.toml:
<pre><code class="hljs language-toml">[dependencies]
serenity = "0.10.5"
tokio = { version = "1.5.0", features = ["full"] }
</code></pre>
<h2>Setting up the Standard Framework</h2>
Serenity has a lot of ﬂex­i­bil­ity. You have ac­cess to a event han­dler that al­lows ﬁne grain con­trol of events. You also have ac­cess to a stan­dard frame­work that makes it ridicu­lously easy to re­spond to com­mands.
Be­fore we do any­thing else, we have to make our main func­tion async. It is su­per easy to do that, just re­place it with:
<pre><code class="hljs language-rust">#[tokio::main]
async fn main() {
}
</code></pre>
First, we want to get our bot to­ken in. In an ac­tual bot, please ob­tain it via an en­vi­ron­ment vari­able or some other method. We are only do­ing it this way for sim­plic­ity.
<pre><code class="hljs language-rust">let token = "{your bot token}";
</code></pre>
If you do not know how to get a bot to­ken, please fol­low <a href="https://www.getdroidtips.com/discord-bot-token/">this tu­to­r­ial</a>.
The Serenity Standard Framework splits your bot’s com­mands into groups. Each group can have mul­ti­ple com­mands. For ex­am­ple, a bot might have two groups: one fo­cused on fun and one fo­cused on math. The for­mer has com­mands like !meme, while the lat­ter may have var­i­ous math func­tions, like sin!. This is also how we will add com­mands to our bot.
First, add the needed structs and macros to the ﬁle:
<pre><code class="hljs language-rust">use serenity::{Client, client::Context, framework::{StandardFramework, standard::{CommandResult, macros::{group, command}}}, model::channel::Message};
</code></pre>
Next, cre­ate a struct that we will at­tach our com­mands to:
<pre><code class="hljs language-rust">#[group]
#[commands()]
struct HelloWorld;
</code></pre>
Once we have added our com­mands, we will en­ter them into the com­mands sub-macro.
Create an in­stance of <code>StandardFramework</code> and add our group to it. We can also con­ﬁg­ure our com­mand pre­ﬁx now.
<pre><code class="hljs language-rust">let framework = StandardFramework::new()
 .configure(|c|{
 c.prefix("!")
 })
 .group(&#x26;HELLOWORLD_GROUP);
</code></pre>
Notice that we used a ref­er­ence to a sta­tic struct called HELLOWORLD_GROUP in­stead of just adding our group. This is the out­put of the #[group] macro.
Now that we have cre­ated our frame­work, we have to at­tach it to a Discord client.
<pre><code class="hljs language-rust">let mut client = Client::builder(token).framework(framework).await.expect("Could not start Discord");
</code></pre>
Start it.
<pre><code class="hljs language-rust">client.start().await.expect("The bot stopped");
</code></pre>
<h2>Adding the Command</h2>
Now that we have the frame­work set up, let’s add a com­mand.
<pre><code class="hljs language-rust">#[command]
async fn ping(ctx: &#x26;Context, msg: &#x26;Message) -> CommandResult{
}
</code></pre>
This com­mand only needs the Discord clien­t’s Context, the mes­sage that con­tains the com­mand, and re­turns a <code>CommandResult</code>.
 Do not for­get to add the com­mand to the group:
<pre><code class="hljs language-rust">#[group]
#[commands(ping)]
struct HelloWorld;
</code></pre>
If you don’t, it will sim­ply not get run.
We want the bot to re­ply to the !ping com­mand with “Pong!”, so let’s add that to the in­side of the ping func­tion:
<pre><code class="hljs language-rust">msg.reply(ctx, "Pong!").await?;
Ok(())
</code></pre>
<h2>Full Code</h2>
Here is the full code for the bot:
<pre><code class="hljs language-rust">use serenity::{Client, client::Context, framework::{StandardFramework, standard::{CommandResult, macros::{group, command}}}, model::channel::Message};
#[tokio::main]
async fn main() {
 let token = "Your bot token";
 let framework = StandardFramework::new()
 .configure(|c|{
 c.prefix("!")
 })
 .group(&#x26;HELLOWORLD_GROUP);
 let mut client = Client::builder(token).framework(framework).await.expect("Could not start Discord");
 client.start().await.expect("The bot stopped");
}
#[group]
#[commands(ping)]
struct HelloWorld;
#[command]
async fn ping(ctx: &#x26;Context, msg: &#x26;Message) -> CommandResult{
 msg.reply(ctx, "Pong!").await?;
 Ok(())
}
</code></pre>
<h2>That’s it</h2>
If you build and run your app, you should have a func­tion­ing Discord bot!
Seren­ity is an amaz­ing crate and is an ab­solute joy to work with. I hope you learned some­thing. There is a ton more stuff that I did not cover here. Feel free to look at the <a href="https://docs.rs/serenity/latest/serenity/">Serenity docs</a> and ex­am­ples to learn more!

We go through step-by-step how to build a Discord bot using the Rust Serenity Framework.

We go through step-by-step how to build a Discord bot us­ing the Rust Serenity Framework.

How to Write a Discord Bot in Rust

<h1>Photography as Meditation</h1>
The goal of med­i­ta­tion is to be­come more mind­ful and aware.
For me, it is of­ten an at­tempt to get an ap­pre­ci­a­tion for my sur­round­ings—to see how ut­terly com­plex the world is.
<img src="/images/pink_flower_tree.webp" alt="Spring has sprung in Colorado. That means pink flowers everwhere.">
Photography does some­thing sim­i­lar for me.
The heft of the cam­era in my hands re­minds me to slow down and take in the view.
My mother is a pho­tog­ra­pher—a great one at that.
She’s been in the busi­ness for at least as long as I’ve been alive.
She tells me some­thing sim­i­lar: the act of fram­ing a pic­ture is it­self a way to un­der­stand your sub­ject bet­ter.
<img src="/images/puddle.webp" alt="Spring brings rain and rain brings puddles.">

Reflecting on the clarity photography brings.

Reﬂecting on the clar­ity pho­tog­ra­phy brings.

Photography As Meditation

<h1>Harper in Firefox Through SpellBolt</h1>
<img src="/images/ford_street.webp" alt="Ford Street, Golden, Colorado">
We de­signed Harper to be the ul­ti­mately portable gram­mar checker, but we’re still work­ing on liv­ing up to that promise.
As the Harper Chrome ex­ten­sion be­comes more ca­pa­ble day-by-day, it has one crit­i­cal weak­ness: it does­n’t sup­port Firefox.
Since Chrome has a much larger mar­ket share, it is­n’t a pri­or­ity at the mo­ment (although we ac­cept con­tri­bu­tions).
This is a won­der­ful ex­am­ple of where the open-source na­ture of the Harper’s core en­gine re­ally shines.
Some­one has taken <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/harper.js"><code>harper.js</code></a> and put it into their own ex­ten­sion.
<a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/spellbolt/">SpellBolt</a> is a Firefox ex­ten­sion that de­liv­ers Harper’s fan­tas­tic gram­mar check­ing straight into your Firefox browser.
My ini­tial test­ing shows that it’s a solid ex­ten­sion.
I am de­lighted to see peo­ple mak­ing use of the plug­gable ar­chi­tec­ture Harper has adopted, and I can’t wait to see what SpellBolt does next.

SpellBolt is a Firefox extension that delivers Harper's fantastic grammar checking straight into your Firefox browser.

SpellBolt is a Firefox ex­ten­sion that de­liv­ers Harper’s fan­tas­tic gram­mar check­ing straight into your Firefox browser.

Harper for Firefox Through Spellbolt

a_harper_record

<h1>A Harper Record</h1>
When we started work on <a href="https://writewithharper.com/docs/harperjs/introduction"><code>harper.js</code></a>, our goal was sim­ple.
We wanted it to take less than 24 hours for a de­vel­oper to em­bed high-qual­ity gram­mar check­ing in their app.
A friend of mine, <a href="https://lukaswerner.com/">Lukas Werner</a> re­cently set a record for this.
In just over 15 min­utes, he was able to em­bed Harper into Raycast, a com­mand palate for MacOS.
This is fan­tas­tic news.
It’s al­ways great to see when your goals are hav­ing a real im­pact on some­one’s abil­ity.
I hope you take the time to look at <a href="https://github.com/lukasmwerner/harper-raycast">the pro­ject on GitHub</a>.
In other news, we have some other small pro­jects us­ing Harper:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://github.com/lockbook/lockbook">Lockbook</a></li>
<li><a href="https://stubby.io/">Stubby CMS</a></li>
</ul>

🎉

Elijah Potter

A Harper Record

Other Stuff

How to Write a Discord Bot in Rust

Photography As Meditation

Harper for Firefox Through Spellbolt