Send a message to a channel with Discord bot

2 minutes to read

Prerequisite

You have setup Discord Server.
You have create a new bot and add it to your Discord server.
Please check "Making Your First Bot with Discord.Net" document for more information.

Setup .NET project and add required Nuget package

Create a .NET Console app project with the following command:
```
$ dotnet new console --name DiscordClientExample
```

CD to DiscordClientExample folder and add a Nuget package with the following command:

$ dotnet add package Discord.Net

Update code to send a message to Discord channel

Open the project with VS Code.

Open Program.cs file and update the code as following:

using Discord;
using Discord.WebSocket;
const string botToken = @"";
ulong channelId = 0;
var client = new DiscordSocketClient();
await client.LoginAsync(TokenType.Bot, botToken);
await client.StartAsync();
var channel = await client.GetChannelAsync(channelId) as IMessageChannel;
await channel!.SendMessageAsync("Hello world");

Get bot's token from Discord application portal and set it as value of botToken variable.
Get ID of a channel that you want to send a message to. You must enable developer mode before you can get a channel ID. Set it to channelId variable;

Run the project

Open VS Code integrated terminal with ctrl+` shotcut.
Then execute the follow command:
```
$ dotnet run
```

Verify if we have message from Discord bot in a chanel

If everything works properly, you should find Hello world message in a Discord channel.

Update code to send an embedded message to Discord channel

Send a message with an image that is hosted on a server.

Open Program.cs file and update the code as following:

using Discord;
using Discord.WebSocket;
const string botToken = @"";
ulong channelId = 0;
var client = new DiscordSocketClient();
await client.LoginAsync(TokenType.Bot, botToken);
await client.StartAsync();
var embed = new EmbedBuilder()
    .WithImageUrl("https://openclipart.org/image/800px/103855") // a URL of an image
    .Build();
var channel = await client.GetChannelAsync(channelId) as IMessageChannel;
// TTS (text to speech), to set whether the message should be read aloud by Discord or not.
await channel!.SendMessageAsync(text: "We ♥ Linux.", isTTS: false, embed: embed);

Send a message with a stream image data

This can be useful when you want to use a local image and upload it to Discord server.

Open Program.cs file and update the code as following:

using Discord;
using Discord.WebSocket;
const string botToken = @"";
ulong channelId = 0;
var client = new DiscordSocketClient();
await client.LoginAsync(TokenType.Bot, botToken);
await client.StartAsync();
// The attached file name must match the one sent to Discord
const string fileName = "tux.png";
var embed = new EmbedBuilder()
    .WithImageUrl($"attachment://{fileName}")
    .WithDescription("We ♥ Linux.")
    .Build();
using var memoryStream = new MemoryStream();
var fileUrl = "https://openclipart.org/image/800px/103855";
using var downloadedStream = await new HttpClient().GetStreamAsync(fileUrl);
await downloadedStream.CopyToAsync(memoryStream);
var channel = await client.GetChannelAsync(channelId) as IMessageChannel;
await channel!.SendFileAsync(stream: memoryStream, filename: fileName, embed: embed);

Send a colored message.

You can send colored text within ANSI code blocks by using ANSI escape code.
Here is the syntax \u001b + "[" + <zero or more numbers, separated by ";"> + <a letter>
The number between [ and m represent text format, foreground and background color. e.g 1:bold, 31:red foreground, 47:white background.
Note for the escape, using \u0001 does not work for me. I need to copy ESC () unicode and use it directly.
Use the following code to send a bold text with red color and white background.

```ansi
[1;31;47m Hello World [0m
```

We use [0m\n at the end to reset color back to normal.

Reference

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