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Initial bot configuration

Useful info​

info

It is recommended to edit .js files with a text editor, I strongly recommend Visual Studio Code which is completely free and open-source. For Linux you can download the binary from the VSCode website if available or download your distribution's package accordingly.

Editing the config file​

The application's token​

Setting up galactica is quite an easy process, and it is required to do it before starting the bot for the first time.

First we need to export the GALACTICA_TOKEN environment variable, this is the token that you got from the Discord Developer Portal when you created your bot application. On UNIX-based systems you can do this by editing your .bashrc file and adding the following line on Windows you need to set the environment variable in the system settings.

export GALACTICA_TOKEN="your-token-here"

Now all we need to do is to save the file and restart your shell, you can do this by running source ~/.bashrc or by simply opening a new terminal, for Windows users a restart is required to refresh the environment variables.

The presence status​

The second step of the configuration is to set the presence status of the bot, this is done by editing the presence properties in the config.js file.

config.js
const { ActivityTypes } = require("discord.js");

module.exports.config = {
    BOT_PRESENCE: "YOUR_BOT_PRESENCE",
    BOT_PRESENCE_TYPE: ActivityTypes.Watching
}

Configuration parameters​

Environment variables​

VariabletypeDefaultDescription
TOKENstringnoThe bot's token, if you don't have one you can get one from the Discord Developer portal .
DATABASE_URLstringnoThe connection string or the file pointing to your SQL database.

Config file​

VariabletypeDefaultDescription
BOT_PRESENCEstringnullSets the rich presence shown on the bot
BOT_PRESENCE_TYPEDiscord#ActivityTypesActivityType#WatchingSets the presence type of the bot. https://discord-api-types.dev/api/discord-api-types-v10/enum/ActivityType

Configuring the database​

Galactica works with a SQL database, you can use any database that is supported by Prisma, but it is recommended to use PostgreSQL or MySQL as they are the most stable and performant.

Setting the environment variable​

Another environment variable that we need to export is DATABASE_URL, this is the URL to your database, you can use a local database or a remote one, it's up to you. For any SQL database, you can use the following line to specify your db's url:

export DATABASE_URL="file:./galactica.db"

After exporting the variable you must restart your shell or restart your computer for the changes to take effect.

Using external databases​

Due to Galactica using the Prisma Object Relational Mapper, it supports most SQL database with little to minimal configuration, to change the default database edit the .env file. To use a different database you must edit the prisma/schema.prisma file. Most of the time you just need to change the provider field but for more info visit prisma docs.

generator client {
  provider = "prisma-client-js"
}

datasource db {
  provider = "YOUR_DATABASE_PROVIDER"
  url      = env("DATABASE_URL")
}

model GuildConfigs {
  id               Int      @id @default(autoincrement())
  guildID          String   @unique
  guildName        String
  dateJoined       DateTime @default(now())
  modLogsIsEnabled Boolean  @default(false)
  modLogsChannelID String?  @unique

  @@index([guildID])
}

Pushing Prisma queries to database​

Now we need to push the changes to the database and generate the according prisma client types, to do so run:

npx prisma db push

Note for planetscale users​

If using planetscale prisma does require some extra configuration the first part which is the schema file is already covered by galactica-bot, and it's located in prisma/schema.planetscale.prisma. The db push command won't work though because it doesn't know where the schema is located, thankfully galactica includes a package.json script which points to the planetscale schema 🥳, to use it just run:

npm run prisma:planetscale

Note for docker users​

The Dockerfile does not have great support for database connections at the mean time, you can run the bot in hardware.