TriviaBot, the discord bot with over 150,000 questions!
This project contains the source code for the Brainbox.cc TriviaBot. Written in C++17 using the D++ library.
It was originally FruitLoopy Trivia on irc.chatspike.net and i've been running this bot in some form since 2004.
This source code repository is for reference and learning only as it won't work without a TriviaBot API key, which i'm not prepared to give out to people (no, this isn't "open trivia database"). Without this key, the bot will start, but will be unable to start any games, or retrieve any statistics or update the cache.
Project and System status
Listing Badges
Supported Platforms
Currently only Linux is supported, but other UNIX-style platforms should build and run the bot fine. I build the bot under Debian Linux 10.
Dependencies
- cmake (version 3.16+)
- g++ (version 8.3+)
- D++ (10.0.18 or later)
- PCRE (whichever -dev package comes with your OS)
- MySQL Connector/C++ (1.1.12 or later from the MySQL community apt repository)
- fmtlib (8.1.1)
- spdlog (latest master branch)
Setup
1. Build Source Code
mkdir build
cmake ..
make -j8
Replace the number after -j with a number suitable for your setup, usually the same as the number of cores on your machine.
2. Setup Database
You should have a database configured with the mysql schemas from the mysql-schemas directory. use mysqlimport to import this. Note that the database schema included only has the bare minimum tables to boot the client bot. There is no question database structure, or API schema included in this dump.
3. Edit Configuration File
Edit the config-example.json file and save it as config.json. The configuration variables are documented below:
| Key Name | Description |
|---|---|
| devtoken | Discord bot token for a development version of the bot, allowing you to keep development and live copies separate |
| livetoken | Discord bot token for live version of the bot (see above) |
| shardcount | Number of shards in total, split across clusters |
| dbhost | Hostname or IP address of MySQL server where the triviabot client schema is hosted |
| dbuser | Username for MySQL server |
| dbpass | Password for MySQL server |
| dbname | Database name for MySQL database on the server containing the triviabot schema |
| dbport | TCP Port number for the MySQL server |
| test_server | The test server is the only server which will respond to commands, if the bot is started with the -test command-line argument |
| utr_readonly_key | Readonly API key for uptimerobot, used to update status pages if you are using uptimerobot to monitor uptime |
| error_recipient | E-Mail address to receive core files in the event of a client crash (!) |
| owner | Snowflake ID of the bot owner. There can only be one bot owner |
| apikey | TriviaBot API key. This is NOT an Open Trivia Database key. Speak to Brain#0001 about API keys. |
| modules | A list of modules to load. Be sure to load the trivia module! |
| shitlist | An array of snowflake IDs of guilds where trivia cannot be started. Instead, the person issuing the !trivia start command |
| will get a friendly message encouraging them to invite the bot to their own server. Put places like bot lists in here. |
4. Start Bot
Before the initial startup, you should first make a log directory inside your build directory:
mkdir my-bot-dir/build/log
Once this is done, you will be able to start the bot so long as you've set up the database and configuration file, above.
cd my-bot-dir
./run.sh
run.sh will restart the bot executable continually if it dies. If the bot quits, run.sh will trigger mail-core-fire.sh which will email a coredump to the admin user, if GDB is installed.
Command line parameters
./bot [--dev|--test] [--members] [--clusterid <id> --maxclusters <n>]
| Argument | Meaning |
|---|---|
| --dev | Run using the development token in the config file. Mutually exclusive with --test |
| --test | Run using the live token in the config file, but squelch all outbound messages unless they originate from the test server (also defined in the config file) |
| --members | Send a GUILD_MEMBERS intent when identifying to the discord gateway. Note that you'll need this after October 2020 for bots in over 100 servers. |
| --clusterid | The id of this process in a cluster of maxclusters processes. Shards are equally shared between all clusters, e.g. if you have two clusters and ten shards each cluster process will have 5 shards on it. |
| --maxclusters | Number of cluster processes to share shards across. You must launch at least this many processes, each of which has a unique cluster id between 0 and max - 1 as it's id using the --clusterid command line parameter |
Version History
| Version/Date | Protocol | Platform/Libraries | Language | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.0 / 2004 | IRC | WinBot 2.3 | WinBotScript (WBS) | Discontinued |
| 2.0 / 2005 | IRC | WinBot 2.7 | PlugPerl (Perl 5.6) | Discontinued |
| 3.0 / 2005 | IRC | Botnix 1.0 Beta 1 | Perl 5.6 | Discontinued |
| 4.0 / 2020 | Discord | Sporks, aegis.cpp | C++17 | Discontinued |
| 5.0 / 2021 | Discord | Sporks, D++ | C++17 | Active |
Known issues
- libmysqlcppconn versions less than 1.1.12 will cause corruption of query results where any string or blob is over 64 bytes in size. This is fixed in versions of Connector/C++ provided with debian 11, but not debian 10. If you are on Debian 10, you must install the Connector/C++ from the mysql community repository, otherwise you can just do
apt-get install libmysqlcppconn-dev. - You will have to configure your MySQL server to accept more concurrent connections if you run many clusters. Each instance of the bot will connect to MySQL 10 times to be able to run concurrent queries, as one connection only supports one ongoing query at a time.