Polaris!

...is a super customizable XP bot for Discord with all sorts of neat features! Unfortunately, it's become increasingly annoying to host, so I'm passing the torch by open-sourcing all the messy code and allowing anyone to host this thing!

If you're an experienced software dev i am so sorry for what comes next

How do I host it?

It's ""easy!""

Step 0: Node.js

If you don't have node.js, go get it
Once you've set up node, run npm i in the bot's root directory
- If you're new around here, and you're on Windows, you can open up the terminal in a specific directory by shift+rightclicking a blank spot in the folder and pressing Open in Terminal/Powershell/cmd/etc.

Step 1: Setting up the bot

Fortunately Discord makes this super easy, thanks Discord

Create a Discord Application via the developer portal
- Name it, decorate it, etc
Copy the file named .env.example, rename it to .env, and open it in a text editor
Remove the placeholder values and paste in the application's actual ID, token, and secret.
- ID can be found in the general tab on the dev portal. It's literally just the bot's account ID
- A token can be generated from the bot tab. Keep it top secret, you should know this
- A secret can be generated from the OAuth2 tab
On the OAuth2 tab, add http://localhost:6880/auth as a redirect URI. You can change the port as long as you do so in config.json as well.
Invite the bot to a server by going to this link and replacing "123456789" in the URL with your bot's ID

Step 2: Set up the config file

Open the config.json file in the codebase
- Add a server ID to test_server_ids, this is where dev commands will be deployed when you run the bot for the first time
- Add your own user ID to developer_ids so you can run dev commands
- lockBotToDevOnly makes it so only you can use the bot, for local testing and such
- There's a couple settings for the web server, you probably don't really need to touch them
- siteURL does NOT control the actual URL for your server - it just changes where the bot links users to
- If you provide a changelogURL or supportURL they'll appear in /botstatus
Test out the bot by opening up your terminal in the root directory and typing node polaris.js
- Most commands won't work due to the lack of a database, but if the bot appears online it means you're good
- Only dev commands will be present by default, the rest will be deployed in step 4. Dev commands are only visible to server admins and only work if you're specified as a dev in the config file

Step 3: Setting up the database

Personally I know very little about this topic so if it sounds like I have no idea what I'm saying, it's because I don't. This is just what I do for my own projects. This step is like the equivalent of learning about port forwarding for your Minecraft server, so don't feel bad if this is the point where you give up

There's many different ways to set up MongoDB, but I recommend one of these methods:

Option 1: MongoDB Atlas

This is MongoDB's cloud service. It's by far the easiest to set up, but all the data is stored on their cloud, not yours. The free tier has a storage limit, but you won't go anywhere close to exceeding it.

Option 2: Host it on a server

My personal choice, because I have one. If you have an Ubuntu server, this tutorial followed by this one should be good. (if the mongo command doesn't work, use mongosh)
If you don't have an Ubuntu server, just google around and there will probably be a guide for your platform
If you created a DB along with a username and password, you did it correctly
I also recommend setting up MongoDB compass so you have a GUI!

Option 3: Host it on your computer

Probably not the wisest idea since it needs to be running 24/7. I would only do this if you're hosting the entire bot on it for some reason, or just want to test things out. But if that sounds like a plan to you, go follow this absurdly long tutorial.

All set? Awesome. Polaris uses two collections: servers for server data, and auth for website logins. I'm pretty sure the bot automatically creates these for you.

Find your connection string. The way you obtain it depends on how you set up MongoDB, but there will definitely be one. It should start with mongodb:// or mongodb+srv:// or something similar. If you're self-hosting and can't find the string, you can skip this and just use the username + password you set up.
Open up .env and paste in your database name as well as the connection string (MONGO_DB_URI in the file). If you don't want to use a connection string you can leave the value blank and provide the IP, username, and password instead.
Fire up the bot and check the console to see if it connected!
- To double check, you can run /db with no arguments - if the bot responds (likely "No data!") it means you actually did it correctly!!! If not, cry

If it's not connecting, try checking:

Is the database actually running?
Did you paste the connection string incorrectly?
Did you enter the correct database name into .env?
Did you enter the right username and password?

Step 4: Final steps

Deploy the bot's commands by running /deploy with the global argument set to true
If you have the web server enabled, it should be running on localhost. From there you can authorize your Discord account and change server settings
- The web server uses a lot of resources but is also needed to modify advanced settings for the bot. It also contains the leaderboard page
- If you're happy with your settings and only plan on using the bot for one server, you can disable the server in config.json and only enable it when you need to tweak things
  - Note that most simple settings (booleans and numbers) can be tweaked from /config
  - Reward roles and multipliers can be configured via /rewardrole and /multiplier
- If you're running Polaris from a hosted server, make sure the port you chose is open. Then you should be able to visit http://<server ip>:<port>, e.g. http://7.7.7.7:6880. Make sure to also add it as an OAuth2 redirect in the Discord dev portal, ending in /auth. (e.g. http://7.7.7.7:6880/auth)
- If you don't want the URL to be a shady looking IP, you're going to need to buy a domain then reverse proxy your localhost into an actual public URL. I wish you luck. (add that one as an OAuth2 redirect as well)
  - Just google "localhost to public URL" and you should get some info on how to do this
  - Alternatively, you can try Cloudflare Tunnel or ngrok - though these are usually more temporary solutions
If you want the bot to be public, set that up in the Discord dev portal. But make sure you can handle it.
- The bot should work fine until sharding kicks in (at ~2500 servers), then it might start to break down a little
- Really, it comes down to your server specs and the number of members in a server

Some other tips

Transferring data from the original Polaris

NOTE: If you are listed as a bot developer, you can access the dashboard for any server your bot is in. The JSON import feature is heavily limited for non-devs (security reasons), so feel free to use this power in order to import .json files for others.

On the original Polaris dashboard, go to the Data tab of your server settings and press Download all data. This will download a .json file
On your own hosted dashboard, go to the Data tab of your server settings, scroll down, and scroll down to the import settings section
Upload the .json file and press import
All data from Polaris should be transferred!

Using dev commands

/db allows you to view a server's raw data, or modify it

e.g. /db property:settings.multipliers returns the data in settings.multipliers
e.g. /db property:users.123456.xp new_value:10 sets the user with ID 123456's XP to 10

/setactivitylets you change the bot's custom status, the args should walk you through it

/setversion updates the version number in /botstatus

/deploy deploys dev commands to the server, or the global commands everyone uses.

There's also an option to undeploy the dev commands, but make sure at least one server has them or you'll need to dive into the code to get them back
If this happens, open index.js and change if (cmds.size < 1) to if (true) in order to force-deploy the commands on the next startup

/run simply lets you evaluate js code, not much need for this unless you're adding new stuff and are familiar with discord.js

Devs can also view and modify any server from the web dashboard. The main use for this is importing from .json files, since only bot devs can do that (security reasons)

Want to modify the bot?

Do whatever you want as long as you credit me and use your own fork for it.

If you're hosting this publicly, credit me extra hard
Do not add any paid or monetized features
Issues and PRs on this repo are only for things that improve the open-source code, it's not a place for feature requests and new stuff as I'm no longer maintaining this bot

If you ever have any questions feel free to reach out to me, the Polaris support server is a good place for it

And if the code is bad, forgive me

Microsoft-community/Polaris-Open