Simple Discord Python Bot Err0r

Question

apparently I am creating a simple discord reply bot and I have an error with my code. Even if I say the correct word with $ in chat, it is still using and replying to me with the else statement. I do not have this problem on the replit, but I do on my home PC, what could be the problem?

import discord
import os
from dotenv import load_dotenv

client = discord.Client(intents=discord.Intents.default())

load_dotenv()
TOKEN = 'TOKEN'

@client.event
async def on_message(message):
  if message.author == client.user:
    return

  if message.content.startswith('$hello'):
    await message.channel.send("Hello World!")
  else:
    await message.channel.send("Hello World! BUT ERROR")

@client.event
async def on_connect():
  print("Bot Connected")
    
client.run(TOKEN)

enter image description here

Answer 1

If I understand your question correctly. I suggested that you use the following code instead for this simple task.

@client.event
async def on_message(message):
  if message.author == client.user:
    return

  if message.content.lower() == '$hello':
    await message.channel.send("Hello World!")
  else:
    await message.channel.send("Hello World! BUT ERROR")

What I have changed here is simply using the string matching instead of startswith() function.

Answer 2

Your bot does not have the Message Content Intents , so it will not be able to read messages sent by users.

In discord.py 2.0, a bot must have the Message intent in order to read messages' content.

To enable Message Intents for your bot, follow these steps:

1. Go to Discord's developer portal and click on your application's name.
2. Click on "Bot" in the sidebar.
3. Scroll down until you see "Privileged Gateway Intents" .
4. You should see the option named "Message Content Intent" . Enable it.

The next step: At the start of your bot code, you should have a line of code that creates a Client or Bot object, for example: client = discord.Client() or bot = discord.Bot(...)

First, you should define a variable intents :

intents = discord.Intents.all()  # define intents

Now, add the parameter intents to the object, like this:

client = discord.Client(intents=intents)

or:

bot = discord.Bot(..., intents=intents)

And you are all set!

Hope this helped.