Messages: Manual Handling

Messages support a specific set of components, which you can read about on the basics page. For longer-lived message components, including those that must work after the bot restarts, it may be better to create your components manually, and write your own Event Handlers.

Defining Components

You can define components using Kord's built-in APIs in any message creation/editing builder. You'll need to define the action rows first, and then place components within them.

ID Parsing and Clashes

If your extension creates multiple long-lived components, you should think about the IDs you use for them.

Since you can parse the component ID when you receive an interaction event, it is a good idea to use a system of prefixed IDs containing additional contextual information. However, it is important to remember that your component IDs must not clash with the components defined in other extensions.

Component IDs may be up to 100 characters long.

actionRow {
	interactionButton(ButtonStyle.Success, "roles/add") {
		label = "Add"
	}

	interactionButton(ButtonStyle.Danger, "roles/remove") {
		label = "Remove"
	}
}

You may use the following functions to define components:

channelSelect - Create a channel select menu.
interactionButton - Create an interaction button. Providing the Link button style will cause an error, so use the linkButton function for link buttons instead.
linkButton - Create a link button.
premiumButton - Create a premium button.
mentionableSelect - Create a mentionable select menu.
roleSelect - Create a role select menu.
stringSelect - Create a string select menu.
userSelect - Create a user select menu.

For more information, see the Kord docs.

Defining Event Handlers

Once you've created your components, you'll need to create some event handlers. Kord provides several suitable event types:

ComponentInteractionCreateEvent, fired when a user interacts with any of this bot's components.
ButtonInteractionCreateEvent, fired when a user interacts with any of this bot's buttons.
SelectMenuInteractionCreateEvent, fired when a user interacts with any of this bot's select menus.

These events also come in global and guild variants.

val matchRegex = "role/\\w+".toRegex()

event<GuildButtonInteractionCreateEvent> {
	check {
		failIf(!matchRegex.matches(event.interaction.componentId))
	}

	action {
		val action = matchRegex
			.matchEntire(event.interaction.componentId)!!
			.groupValues[1]

		when (action) {
			"add" -> {
				// Add the role
			}

			"remove" -> {
				// Remove the role
			}

			else -> event.interaction.respondEphemeral {
				content = "Unknown action: $action"
			}
		}
	}
}

For more information, see the Kord docs.

Defining Components​

Defining Event Handlers​

Defining Components

Defining Event Handlers