Registering slash commands

Discord provides developers with the option to create client-integrated slash commands. In this section, we'll cover how to register these commands using discord.js!

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If you already have slash commands set-up for your application and want to learn how to respond to them, refer to the following page.

Global commands

First up, we'll introduce you to global application commands. These types of commands will be available in all guilds your application has the applications.commands scope authorized, as well as in DMs.

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Global commands are cached for one hour. New global commands will fan out slowly across all guilds and will only be guaranteed to be updated after an hour. Guild commands update instantly. As such, we recommend you use guild-based commands during development and publish them to global commands when they're ready for public use.

To register a global command, pass an ApplicationCommandData object to the ApplicationCommandManager#create() method:

client.on('messageCreate', async message => {
	if (!client.application?.owner) await client.application?.fetch();

	if (message.content.toLowerCase() === '!deploy' && message.author.id === client.application?.owner.id) {
		const data = {
			name: 'ping',
			description: 'Replies with Pong!',
		};

		const command = await client.application?.commands.create(data);
		console.log(command);
	}
});

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Command names must be lowercase. You will receive an API error otherwise.

That's it! You've successfully created your first global application command! Let's move on to guild commands.

Guild commands

Guild-specific application commands are only available in the guild they were created in. You can use GuildApplicationCommandManager#create() to create them:

client.on('messageCreate', async message => {
	if (!client.application?.owner) await client.application?.fetch();

	if (message.content.toLowerCase() === '!deploy' && message.author.id === client.application?.owner.id) {
		const data = {
			name: 'ping',
			description: 'Replies with Pong!',
		};

		const command = await client.guilds.cache.get('123456789012345678')?.commands.create(data);
		console.log(command);
	}
});

Bulk-update commands

If, for example, you deploy your application commands when starting your application, you may want to update all commands and their changes at once. You can do this by passing an array of ApplicationCommandData objects to the set() method on either of the managers introduced above:

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This will overwrite all existing commands on the application or guild with the new data provided!

client.on('messageCreate', async message => {
	if (!client.application?.owner) await client.application?.fetch();

	if (message.content.toLowerCase() === '!deploy' && message.author.id === client.application?.owner.id) {
		const data = [
			{
				name: 'ping',
				description: 'Replies with Pong!',
			},
			{
				name: 'pong',
				description: 'Replies with Ping!',
			},
		];

		const commands = await client.application?.commands.set(data);
		console.log(commands);
	}
});

Options

Application commands can have options. Think of these options as arguments to a function. You can specify them as shown below:

const data = {
	name: 'echo',
	description: 'Replies with your input!',
	options: [{
		name: 'input',
		type: 'STRING',
		description: 'The input to echo back',
		required: true,
	}],
};

Notice how required: true is specified within the options object. Setting this will prevent the user from sending the command without specifying a value for this option!

Option types

As shown in the options example above, you can specify the type of an ApplicationCommandOption. Listed below are all the possible values you can pass as ApplicationCommandOptionType:

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Refer to the Discord API documentation for detailed explanations on the SUB_COMMAND and SUB_COMMAND_GROUP option typesopen in new window.

• SUB_COMMAND sets the option to be a sub-command
• SUB_COMMAND_GROUP sets the option to be a sub-command-group
• STRING sets the option to require a string value
• INTEGER sets the option to require an integer value
• BOOLEAN sets the option to require a boolean value
• USER sets the option to require a user or snowflake as value
• CHANNEL sets the option to require a channel or snowflake as value
• ROLE sets the option to require a role or snowflake as value
• MENTIONABLE sets the option to require a user, role or snowflake as value

Choices

The STRING and INTEGER option types both can have choices. choices are a set of predetermined values users can pick from when selecting the option that contains them.

WARNING

If you specify choices for an option, they'll be the only valid values users can pick!

Specify them by providing an array of ApplicationCommandOptionChoice's to the option when creating a command:

const data = {
	name: 'gif',
	description: 'Sends a random gif!',
	options: [{
		name: 'category',
		type: 'STRING',
		description: 'The gif category',
		required: true,
		choices: [
			{
				name: 'Funny',
				value: 'gif_funny',
			},
			{
				name: 'Meme',
				value: 'gif_meme',
			},
			{
				name: 'Movie',
				value: 'gif_movie',
			},
		],
	}],
};