Creating slash commands

User used /ping

Guide Bot Bot 12/29/2023

Pong!

Discord allows developers to register slash commandsopen in new window, which provide users a first-class way of interacting directly with your application.

Slash commands provide a huge number of benefits over manual message parsing, including:

Integration with the Discord client interface.
Automatic command detection and parsing of the associated options/arguments.
Typed argument inputs for command options, e.g. "String", "User", or "Role".
Validated or dynamic choices for command options.
In-channel private responses (ephemeral messages).
Pop-up form-style inputs for capturing additional information.

...and many more!

Before you continue

Assuming you've followed the guide so far, your project directory should look something like this:

discord-bot/
├── node_modules
├── config.json
├── index.js
├── package-lock.json
└── package.json

TIP

For fully functional slash commands, there are three important pieces of code that need to be written. They are:

The individual command files, containing their definitions and functionality.
The command handler, which dynamically reads the files and executes the commands.
The command deployment script, to register your slash commands with Discord so they appear in the interface.

These steps can be done in any order, but all are required before the commands are fully functional.

On this page, you'll complete Step 1. Make sure to also complete the other pages linked above!

Individual command files

Create a new folder named commands and a subfolder named utility inside it, which is where you'll store all of your utility command files. You'll be using the SlashCommandBuilderopen in new window class to construct the command definitions.

At a minimum, the definition of a slash command must have a name and a description. Slash command names must be between 1-32 characters and contain no capital letters, spaces, or symbols other than - and _. Using the builder, a simple ping command definition would look like this:

new SlashCommandBuilder()
	.setName('ping')
	.setDescription('Replies with Pong!');

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A slash command also requires a function to run when the command is used, to respond to the interaction. Using an interaction response method confirms to Discord that your bot successfully received the interaction, and has responded to the user. Discord enforces this to ensure that all slash commands provide a good user experience (UX). Failing to respond will cause Discord to show that the command failed, even if your bot is performing other actions as a result.

The simplest way to acknowledge and respond to an interaction is the interaction.reply() method. Other methods of replying are covered on the Response methods page later in this section.

async execute(interaction) {
	await interaction.reply('Pong!')
}

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Put these two together by creating a ping.js file in the commands/utility folder for your first command. Inside this file, you're going to define and export two items.

The data property, which will provide the command definition shown above for registering to Discord.
The execute method, which will contain the functionality to run from our event handler when the command is used.

These are placed inside module.exports so they can be read by other files; namely the command loader and command deployment scripts mentioned earlier.

const { SlashCommandBuilder } = require('discord.js');

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

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TIP

module.exportsopen in new window is how you export data in Node.js so that you can require()open in new window it in other files.

If you need to access your client instance from inside a command file, you can access it via interaction.client. If you need to access external files, packages, etc., you should require() them at the top of the file.

That's it for your basic ping command. Below are examples of two more commands we're going to build upon throughout the guide, so create two more files for these before you continue reading.

const { SlashCommandBuilder } = require('discord.js');

module.exports = {
	data: new SlashCommandBuilder()
		.setName('user')
		.setDescription('Provides information about the user.'),
	async execute(interaction) {
		// interaction.user is the object representing the User who ran the command
		// interaction.member is the GuildMember object, which represents the user in the specific guild
		await interaction.reply(`This command was run by ${interaction.user.username}, who joined on ${interaction.member.joinedAt}.`);
	},
};

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const { SlashCommandBuilder } = require('discord.js');

module.exports = {
	data: new SlashCommandBuilder()
		.setName('server')
		.setDescription('Provides information about the server.'),
	async execute(interaction) {
		// interaction.guild is the object representing the Guild in which the command was run
		await interaction.reply(`This server is ${interaction.guild.name} and has ${interaction.guild.memberCount} members.`);
	},
};

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Next steps

You can implement additional commands by creating new files within a dedicated subfolder in the commands folder, but these three are the ones we're going to use for the examples as we go on. For now let's move on to the code you'll need for command handling, to load the files and respond to incoming interactions.

Resulting code

If you want to compare your code to the code we've constructed so far, you can review it over on the GitHub repository here open in new window.

# Creating slash commands

# Before you continue

# Individual command files

# Next steps

# Resulting code

Creating slash commands

Before you continue

Individual command files

Next steps

Resulting code