This page is dedicated to helping you get started on your way to making the next great Discord bot or client with DiscordGo. Once you've done that please don't forget to submit it to the Awesome DiscordGo list :).
First, lets cover a few topics so you can make the best choices on how to move forward from here.
When installing DiscordGo you will need to decide if you want to use the current master branch or the bleeding edge development branch.
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The master branch represents the latest released version of DiscordGo. This branch will always have a stable and tested version of the library. Each release is tagged and you can easily download a specific release and view the release notes on the github releases page.
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The develop branch is where all development happens and almost always has new features over the master branch. However breaking changes are frequently added the develop branch and sometimes bugs are introduced. Bugs get fixed and the breaking changes get documented before pushing to master.
So, what should you use?
Due to the how frequently the Discord API is changing there is a high chance that the master branch may be lacking important features. Because of that, if you can accept the constant changing nature of the develop branch and the chance that it may occasionally contain bugs then it is the recommended branch to use. Otherwise, if you want to tail behind development slightly and have a more stable package with documented releases then please use the master branch instead.
You probably already know the answer to this but now is a good time to decide if your goal is to write a client application or a bot. DiscordGo aims to fully support both client applications and bots but there are some differences between the two that you should understand.
A client application is a program that is intended to be used by a normal user as a replacement for the official clients that Discord provides. An example of this would be a terminal client used to read and send messages with your normal user account or possibly a new desktop client that provides a different set of features than the official desktop client that Discord already provides.
Client applications work with normal user accounts and you can login with an email address and password or a special authentication token. However, normal user accounts are not allowed to perform any type of automation and doing so can cause the account to be banned from Discord. Also normal user accounts do not support multi-server voice connections and some other features that are exclusive to Bot accounts only.
To create a new user account (if you have not done so already) visit the Discord website and click on the Try Discord Now, It's Free button then follow the steps to setup your new account.
A bot application is a special program that interacts with the Discord servers to perform some form of automation or provide some type of service. Examples are things like number trivia games, music streaming, channel moderation, sending reminders, playing loud airhorn sounds, comic generators, YouTube integration, Twitch integration.. You're almost only limited by your imagination.
Bot applications require the use of a special Bot account. These accounts are tied to your personal user account. Bot accounts cannot login with the normal user clients and they cannot join servers the same way a user does. They do not have access to some user client specific features however they gain access to many Bot specific features.
To create a new bot account first create yourself a normal user account on Discord then visit the My Applications page and click on the New Application box. Follow the prompts from there to finish creating your account.
More information about Bots vs Client accounts can be found here
DiscordGo requires Go version 1.4 or higher. It has been tested to compile and run successfully on Debian Linux 8, FreeBSD 10, and Windows 7. It is expected that it should work anywhere Go 1.4 or higher works. If you run into problems please let us know :)
You must already have a working Go environment setup to use DiscordGo. If you are new to Go and have not yet installed and tested it on your computer then please visit this page first then I highly recommend you walk though A Tour of Go to help get your familiar with the Go language. Also checkout the relevent Go plugin for your editor - they are hugely helpful when developing Go code.
Like any other Go package the fist step is to go get the package. This will
always pull the latest released version from the master branch. Then run
go install to compile and install the libraries on your system.
Run go get to download the package to your GOPATH/src folder.
go get github.com/bwmarrin/discordgoIf you want to use the develop branch, follow these steps next.
cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/bwmarrin/discordgo
git checkout developFinally, compile and install the package into the GOPATH/pkg folder. This isn't absolutely required but doing this will allow the Go plugin for your editor to provide autocomplete for all DiscordGo functions.
cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/bwmarrin/discordgo
go installPlaceholder.
More coming soon.