Birthbot

Birthbot is a Discord bot for keeping track of birthdays.

Features

• Commands

  Birthbot recognises the following slash commands:

  • birthday get to retrieve a user's birthday
  • birthday set to add or update the command user's birthday
  • birthday unset to remove the command user's birthday
  • birthday announce to add or update the channel used for birthday announcements
  • birthday unannounce to remove the channel used for birthday announcements
  • birthday list to list all birthdays
  • birthday next to list any upcoming birthdays

• Announcements

  Every 24 hours beginning from its startup time, Birthbot checks its database for any ongoing birthdays, taking timezones into account.

  If any matches are found, they are announced in the channel as specified by birthday announce. If no announcement channel is set up, the birthdays are ignored.

Setup

To host a separate instance of Birthbot, the following setup is required:

• Environment

  Birthbot expects a .env file in its executing directory (or its parent(s)). This must contain the following information:

  • A TOKEN key, with Birthbot's secret token
  • A CLUSTER key, with the URI of the MongoDB cluster to use (usually in the format mongodb+srv://USERNAME:[email protected]/?retryWrites=true&w=majority)
  • A DATABASE key, with the name of the database to use

  Optionally, if Birthbot is compiled with the guild Cargo feature, it must also contain a GUILD key with a guild ID.

• Database

  Birthbot stores all its data on a MongoDB database as specified by the .env file. Separate collections are used for each guild, in which separate documents are used to store each user's birthday.

Errors

If and when an error occurs, Birthbot attempts to notify the command user of it. Every error will also be printed to the standard error output.

Thanks to Rust's fantastic error handling, it is nearly impossible for Birthbot to crash due to an error.

Privacy

Birthbot stores the bare minimum amount of data necessary to perform its tasks. This includes:

• Guild IDs - used as collection identifiers
• User IDs - used as document identifiers
• Channel IDs - used to announce birthdays
• Birthdays - used to check birthdays