It's sends 4 times the amount of members

Question

So I want my bot in a certain server to send a dm to a random member every 10 minutes. And when my bot has sent everyone from the server a dm it sends a complete message.

But when i start the bot it sends 4 times the amount of members

if (message.content.startsWith(botconfig.prefix + 'dmall')) {
    console.log("demo");
    var list = message.guild.members.array();
    sendMessage(list);
  }
});


function sendMessage(list) {
  setTimeout(function () {
    for (i = 0; i < list.length; i++) {
      console.log(list.length);
    }

    console.log("I'm done, mate!");
    sendMessage(list);
  }, 10 * 1000);
}

CONSOLE:

demo
4 (is the amount of the members)
4
4
4
I'm done mate!

Answer 1

This part of your code:

for (i = 0; i < list.length; i++) {
  console.log(list.length);
}

tells Javascript to run the statement:

  console.log(list.length);

list.length times. If list.length is 4 which it appears to be here, then you will see in the console

4
4
4
4

That's what the code was instructed to do.

I don't see any reason why you'd put that in a loop unless you want to output each array element separately. So, if you want to just output the length once, then replace this:

for (i = 0; i < list.length; i++) {
  console.log(list.length);
}

with this:

console.log(list.length);

---

In addition, if you were to use a for loop, you MUST declare all variables that you use. So, this:

for (i = 0; i < list.length; i++) {

is very dangerous. It relies on a higher scoped i which can easily conflict with other higher scoped i variables and create hard-to-figure out bugs. Every for loop should declare it's own loop variable as in:

for (let i = 0; i < list.length; i++) {

If you run your code in strict mode (which you should), the above for loop declaration would likely cause an error (which is a good thing because you'd immediately see the coding error and fix it).

Answer 2

There are a couple of things wrong here. For of: JavaScript variable scoping messing you up ( Different example here

Second of all: setTimeout is not the same as setInterval.

Completely fixing your issue would be:

 // Use the discord API let users = ['justme'] function getUsers() { // Mutate just to display a new one each time users = [...users, users.length.toString()]; return users } function notifyUsers() { // Retrieve all users now const currentUsers = getUsers() // Send a message to each user currentUsers.forEach(user => sendMessage(user)) console.log('I have sent everyone a message') } function sendMessage(user) { console.log(`Sending message to ${user}`) } // Start the application by looping every <whatever> setInterval(() => notifyUsers(), 1000)