Hacko

Discord bot that is perfect for hackathons

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Inspiration

While working on digital hackathosn, it is very difficult to manage tasks. This would require hackers to install a lot of bots to manage these on their discord server. Hacko solves this problem by providing a single bot that is perfect for digital hackathons.

What it does

  • Set a deadline for the project submission and get appropriate reminders. Also get the time left using commands
  • Set timezones for the users and make it easy to work with hackers in different timezones
  • Inform if a mentioned user in a timezone where the hacker might be sleeping
  • Get timezones for all hackers
  • Set reminders for events happening in a hackathon
  • Constant reminders to commit code frequently and follow best practices
  • Get motivational quotes to keep hackers motivated
  • Store important resources and fetch them anytime

How I built it

Hacko was built using discord.js and Firestore (Firebase) for the database. A few third party APIs have been used for the motivational quotes(https://api.quotable.io/) and other functionalities

Challenges I ran into

This was my first time building a discord bot and learning and building it in a weekend was the first challenge. Working with typescript and looking for third part APIs was also very challenging. The usual challenge of managing time along with other activities in the weekend was also there.

Accomplishments that I am proud of

I am really proud about the error handling on the bot i.e, I have considered most edge cases and handled it pretty well. Also, proud about having a functional bot that has quite some features in less than a weekend.

What I learned

Building discord bots using discord.js and hosting discord bots, thanks to Mara's workshop. Also working with regex and javascript date methods. Kind of wrote my own regex to validate the date time format expected by the bot. Learnt how to call third party APIs using typescript.

What's next for Hacko

Having a webhook listen to Githhub commits and remind users to commit if there are no commits in the past 2 hours. Decided to skip this because of having to set up a separate server for the webhooks.

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