Chatting With a Discord Bot
Tags: python, todayilearned, blenderbot, devjournal
Published: 2022-09-03 23:05:22

_This is such an old project, but I had no chance until today to make a quick publish!_

Among friends from the gaming community, I have been known as a NPC lover. Do not get me wrong; I do not like certain NPCs, but rather all NPCs. Why not just hang out with other players instead? I am living in real world, so I am not willing if someone—let us say a toxic player—from virtual world could mess up with my life. _The excitement of chatting with real humans is priceless indeed. But at some point in time, we only want to have a friend to chat without knowing who we really are._ If only the in-game player-to-player chat was truly a sandbox, but that is okay.

Name a role-playing game that has real dialogue with NPCs. To date, I have not found one. There have been offering to the answer choices or none at all. Moreover, some only provides futile answer choices, not at all changing the story regardless of the choice.

I have been introduced to BlenderBot, an open source chatbot developed by Facebook AI Research, by a post from @edemgold. But instead, I am eager to turn it into a Discord bot.

File `.env`:

```env
TOKEN={{my_discord_bot_token}}
```

File `words.json`:

```json
{
    "greeting": [
        "Hi", "Hai", "Yo", "Hey", "Heyyy", "Hello", "Hullo",
        "Halo", "Hola", "Howdy", "Hiya", "Ahoy", "Good to see ya",
        "Great to see you", "Nice to see you", "Hey, boo"
    ],
    "encouraging": [
        "Hang in there, {user}.",
        "Don't give up, {user}.",
        "Keep pushing, {user}.",
        "Keep fighting, {user}!",
        "Stay strong, {user}.",
        "Never give up, {user}.",
        "Come on, {user}! You can do it!",
        "Follow your dreams, {user}.",
        "Reach for the stars, {user}.",
        "Do the impossible, {user}.",
        "Believe in yourself, {user}.",
        "The sky is the limit, {user}.",
        "I'll support you either way, {user}.",
        "I'm behind you 100%, {user}."
    ],
    "naugthy": [
        "shit"
    ]
}
```

File `main.py`:

```py
import asyncio
import discord
import json
import os
import random
import re
from dotenv import load_dotenv
from discord.ext import commands
from discord_slash import SlashContext
from discord_slash import SlashCommand
from transformers import BlenderbotTokenizer
from transformers import BlenderbotForConditionalGeneration

load_dotenv()

client = commands.Bot(command_prefix='/')
slash = SlashCommand(client, sync_commands=True)  # TODO: migrate to newly discord built-in

tokenizer = BlenderbotTokenizer.from_pretrained('facebook/blenderbot-400M-distill')
converse_model = BlenderbotForConditionalGeneration.from_pretrained('facebook/blenderbot-400M-distill')

tag_finder = re.compile('\s*<.*?>\s*')
word_finder = re.compile('[^a-zA-Z\s]*')
duplicate_finder = re.compile(r"(.)\1{2,}", re.DOTALL)

with open('words.json', 'r') as f:
    words = json.loads(f.read())


@client.event
async def on_ready():
    print(f'{client.user} has connected to Discord!')


@slash.slash(name='ping', description='PING!')
async def ping(context):
    await context.send('pong')


@slash.slash(name='me', description='Send a message to Naru.')
async def naru(context: SlashContext, message='Hello, Naru!'):
    print(f'{context.author} says {message} to Naru')

    if message == 'Hello, Naru!':
        await context.send('You just say hello to Naru!')
    else:
        await context.send(f'Your message has been sent to Naru.')

    # TODO: send the message to me in DM


@client.event
async def on_message(message):
    # Execute slash commands
    if message.content.startswith('/'):
        return await client.process_commands(message)

    # Do nothing if the message is from the bot itself
    if message.author == client.user:
        return

    # Do nothing if the message is from a bot
    if message.author.bot:
        return

    # Simulate thinking delay
    await asyncio.sleep(30)

    response = []

    # Pre-process the message
    msg = message.content.lower()  # lowercase
    msg = re.sub(word_finder, '', msg)  # remove non-alphanumeric characters
    msg = duplicate_finder.sub(r"\1\1", msg)  # remove more than 2 duplicate letters

    # Ask the user to speak up
    if (msg.isspace() or msg == ''):
        response.append(f"{message.author.mention}, what weighs on your mind?")
        response.append(f"We can talk in DM if you want.")
        return await message.channel.send(' '.join(response))

    # Log the user message
    if message.channel.type is not discord.ChannelType.private:
        print(f'{message.author} says {msg}')

    # Warn the user if the message contains naughty words
    msg_words = msg.split()
    for naughty_word in words['naugthy']:
        if any(naughty_word == word for word in msg_words):
            response.append(f"Hey {message.author.mention}, don't talk badly!")
            response.append(f"Naru taught me to say nice things only.")
            return await message.channel.send(' '.join(response))

    # Indicate the bot is typing
    async with message.channel.typing():

        # Respond to the greeting message
        if msg in [word.lower() for word in words['greeting']]:
            greeting_word = random.choice(words['greeting'])
            greeting_sentence = f'{greeting_word}, {message.author.mention}!'
            response.append(greeting_sentence)

        # Respond to the message
        msg_token = tokenizer(msg, return_tensors='pt')
        msg_reply = converse_model.generate(**msg_token)
        msg_reply = tokenizer.decode(msg_reply[0])
        msg_reply = re.sub(tag_finder, '', msg_reply)
        response.append(msg_reply)

        if response:
            # Send the response
            await message.channel.send(' '.join(response))

            # Log the bot response
            if message.channel.type is not discord.ChannelType.private:
                print(f"Bot replies {' '.join(response)}")


# Run the bot
client.run(os.getenv('TOKEN'))
```

Once the application is run by simply executing `python main.py`, we can basically say anything to the bot. But the best part of it is bringing my own Discord server to life with discussions between bots while I work in the office!

![Chat between bots](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/af7f68fnkcta1ar8p43e.png)

What a time to be alive!