Command Handling

Unless your bot project is small, it's not a very good idea to have a single file with a giant if/else if chain for commands. If you want to implement features into your bot and make your development process a lot less painful, you'll want to implement a command handler. Let's get started on that!

For fully functional slash commands, you need three important pieces of code:

These steps can be followed in any order, but are all required to make your bot work. This page details step 2. Make sure you also check out the other linked pages.

Loading command files

Now that your command files have been created, your bot needs to load these files on startup.

In your index.js file, make these additions to the base template:

const fs = require('node:fs');
const path = require('node:path');
const { Client, Collection, Events, GatewayIntentBits, MessageFlags } = require('discord.js');
const { token } = require('./config.json');

const client = new Client({ intents: [GatewayIntentBits.Guilds] });

client.once(Events.ClientReady, (readyClient) => {
	console.log(`Ready! Logged in as ${readyClient.user.tag}`);
});

client.commands = new Collection(); 

We recommend attaching a .commands property to your client instance so that you can access your commands in other files. The rest of the examples in this guide will follow this convention. For TypeScript users, we recommend extending the base Client class to add this property, casting, or augmenting the module type.

Next, using the modules imported above, dynamically retrieve your command files with a few more additions to the index.js file:

client.commands = new Collection();

const foldersPath = path.join(__dirname, 'commands');
const commandFolders = fs.readdirSync(foldersPath);

for (const folder of commandFolders) {
	const commandsPath = path.join(foldersPath, folder);
	const commandFiles = fs.readdirSync(commandsPath).filter((file) => file.endsWith('.js'));
	for (const file of commandFiles) {
		const filePath = path.join(commandsPath, file);
		const command = require(filePath);
		// Set a new item in the Collection with the key as the command name and the value as the exported module
		if ('data' in command && 'execute' in command) {
			client.commands.set(command.data.name, command);
		} else {
			console.log(`[WARNING] The command at ${filePath} is missing a required "data" or "execute" property.`);
		}
	}
}

First, path.join() helps to construct a path to the commands directory. The first fs.readdirSync() method then reads the path to the directory and returns an array of all the folder names it contains, currently ['utility']. The second fs.readdirSync() method reads the path to this directory and returns an array of all the file names they contain, currently ['ping.js', 'server.js', 'user.js']. To ensure only command files get processed, Array.filter() removes any non-JavaScript files from the array.

With the correct files identified, the last step is dynamically set each command into the client.commands Collection. For each file being loaded, check that it has at least the data and execute properties. This helps to prevent errors resulting from loading empty, unfinished, or otherwise incorrect command files while you're still developing.

Receiving command interactions

You will receive an interaction for every slash command executed. To respond to a command, you need to create a listener for the interactionCreate event that will execute code when your application receives an interaction. Place the code below in the index.js file you created earlier.

client.on(Events.InteractionCreate, (interaction) => {
	console.log(interaction);
});

Not every interaction is a slash command (e.g. MessageComponent interactions). Make sure to only handle slash commands in this function by making use of the BaseInteraction#isChatInputCommand method to exit the handler if another type is encountered. This method also provides typeguarding for TypeScript users, narrowing the type from BaseInteraction to a ChatInputCommandInteraction.

client.on(Events.InteractionCreate, (interaction) => {
	if (!interaction.isChatInputCommand()) return; 
	console.log(interaction);
});

Executing commands

When your bot receives a interactionCreate event, the interaction object contains all the information you need to dynamically retrieve and execute your commands!

Let's take a look at the ping command again. Note the execute() function that will reply to the interaction with "Pong!".

module.exports = {
	data: new SlashCommandBuilder().setName('ping').setDescription('Replies with Pong!'),
	async execute(interaction) {
		await interaction.reply('Pong!');
	},
};

First, you need to get the matching command from the client.commands Collection based on the interaction.commandName. Your Client instance is always available via interaction.client. If no matching command is found, log an error to the console and ignore the event.

With the right command identified, all that's left to do is call the command's .execute() method and pass in the interaction variable as its argument. In case something goes wrong, catch and log any error to the console.

client.on(Events.InteractionCreate, async (interaction) => {
	if (!interaction.isChatInputCommand()) return;
	const command = interaction.client.commands.get(interaction.commandName);

	if (!command) {
		console.error(`No command matching ${interaction.commandName} was found.`);
		return;
	}

	try {
		await command.execute(interaction);
	} catch (error) {
		console.error(error);
		if (interaction.replied || interaction.deferred) {
			await interaction.followUp({
				content: 'There was an error while executing this command!',
				flags: MessageFlags.Ephemeral,
			});
		} else {
			await interaction.reply({
				content: 'There was an error while executing this command!',
				flags: MessageFlags.Ephemeral,
			});
		}
	}
});

Next steps

Your command files are now loaded into your bot, and the event listener is prepared and ready to respond. In the next section, we cover the final step: a command deployment script you'll need to register your commands so they appear in the Discord client.