Creating A Medusa

Theory

Introduction

Medusa system allows you to write independent medusae (known as "modules", "cogs" or "plugins" in other software) which you can then load, unload and update at will without restarting the bot.

The system itself borrows some design from the current way WizBot's Modules are written but mostly from never-released Ayu.Commands system which was designed to be used for a full WizBot v3 rewrite.

The medusa base classes used for development are open source here in case you need reference, as there is no generated documentation at the moment.

Term list

Medusa

The project itself which compiles to a single .dll (and some optional auxiliary files), it can contain multiple Sneks, Services, and ParamParsers

Snek

A class which will be added as a single Module to WizBot on load. It also acts as a lifecycle handler and as a singleton service with the support for initialize and cleanup.
It can contain a Snek (called SubSnek) but only 1 level of nesting is supported (you can only have a snek contain a subsnek, but a subsnek can't contain any other sneks)
Sneks can have their own prefix
- For example if you set this to 'test' then a command called 'cmd' will have to be invoked by using .test cmd instead of .cmd

Snek Command

Acts as a normal command
Has context injected as a first argument which controls where the command can be executed
- AnyContext the command can be executed in both DMs and Servers
- GuildContext the command can only be executed in Servers
- DmContext the command can only be executed in DMs
Support the usual features such as default values, leftover, params, etc.
It also supports dependency injection via [inject] attribute. These dependencies must come after the context and before any input parameters
Supports ValueTask, Task, Task<T> and void return types

Param Parser

Allows custom parsing of command arguments into your own types.
Overriding existing parsers (for example for IGuildUser, etc...) can cause issues.

Service

Usually not needed.
They are marked with a [svc] attribute, and offer a way to inject dependencies to different parts of your medusa.
Transient and Singleton lifetimes are supported.

Localization

Response and command strings can be kept in one of three different places based on whether you plan to allow support for localization

option 1) res.yml and cmds.yml

If you don't plan on having your app localized, but you just may in the future, you should keep your strings in the res.yml and cmds.yml file the root folder of your project, and they will be automatically copied to the output whenever you build your medusa.

Example project folder structure:

- uwu/
    - uwu.csproj
    - uwu.cs
    - res.yml
    - cmds.yml

Example output folder structure:

- medusae/uwu/  
    - uwu.dll  
    - res.yml  
    - cmds.yml

option 2) strings folder

If you plan on having your app localized (or want to allow your consumers to easily add languages themselves), you should keep your response strings in the strings/res/en-us.yml and your command strings in strings/cmds/en-us.yml file. This will be your base file, and from there you can make support for additional languages, for example strings/res/ru-ru.yml and strings/cmds/ru-ru.yml

Example project folder structure:

- uwu/
    - uwu.csproj
    - uwu.cs
    - strings/
        - res/
            - en-us.yml
            - ru-ru.yml
        - cmds/
            - en-us.yml
            - ru-ru.yml

Example output folder structure:

- medusae/uwu/
    - uwu.dll
    - strings/
        - res/
            - en-us.yml
            - ru-ru.yml
        - cmds/
            - en-us.yml
            - ru-ru.yml

option 3) In the code

If you don't want any auxiliary files, and you don't want to bother making new .yml files to keep your strings in, you can specify the command strings directly in the [cmd] attribute itself, and use non-localized methods for message sending in your commands.

If you update your response strings .yml file(s) while the medusa is loaded and running, running .stringsreload will reload the responses without the need to reload the medusa or restart the bot.

Config

Medusa config is kept in medusae/medusa.yml file
At the moment this config only keeps track of which medusae are currently loaded (they will also be always loaded at startup)
If a medusa is causing issues and you're unable to unload it, you can remove it from the loaded: list in this config file and restart the bot. It won't be loaded next time the bot is started up

Unloadability issues

To make sure your medusa can be properly unloaded/reloaded you must:

Make sure that none of your types and objects are referenced by the Bot or Bot's services after the DisposeAsync is called on your Snek instances.
Make sure that all of your commands execute quickly and don't have any long running tasks, as they will hold a reference to a type from your assembly
If you are still having issues, you can always run .meunload followed by a bot restart, or if you want to find what is causing the medusa unloadability issues, you can check the microsoft's assembly unloadability debugging guide

Practice

This section will guide you through how to create a simple custom medusa. You can find the entirety of this code hosted here

Prerequisite

.net6 sdk installed
Optional: use vscode to write code

Guide

Open your favorite terminal and navigate to a folder where you will keep your project .
Create a new folder
- mkdir example_medusa
Create a new .net class library
- dotnet new classlib
Open the current folder with your favorite editor/IDE. In this case we'll use VsCode
- code .
Remove the Class1.cs file
Replace the contents of the .csproj file with the following contents

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">
    <PropertyGroup>
        <TargetFramework>net6.0</TargetFramework>
        
        <!-- Reduces some boilerplate in your .cs files -->
        <ImplicitUsings>enable</ImplicitUsings>
        
        <!-- Use latest .net features -->
        <LangVersion>preview</LangVersion>
        <EnablePreviewFeatures>true</EnablePreviewFeatures>
        <GenerateRequiresPreviewFeaturesAttribute>true</GenerateRequiresPreviewFeaturesAttribute>
        
        <!-- tell .net that this library will be used as a plugin -->
        <EnableDynamicLoading>true</EnableDynamicLoading>
    </PropertyGroup>
    
    <ItemGroup>
        <!-- Base medusa package. You MUST reference this in order to have a working medusa -->
        <!-- Also, this package comes from MyGet, which requires you to have a NuGet.Config file next to your .csproj -->
        <PackageReference Include="WizBot.Medusa" Version="4.3.9">
            <PrivateAssets>all</PrivateAssets>
        </PackageReference>

        <!-- Note: If you want to use WizBot services etc... You will have to manually clone 
          the gitlab.com/WizNet/WizBot repo locally and reference the WizBot.csproj because there is no WizBot package atm.
          It is strongly recommended that you checkout a specific tag which matches your version of wizbot,
          as there could be breaking changes even between minor versions of WizBot.
          For example if you're running WizBot 4.1.0 locally for which you want to create a medusa for,
          you should do "git checkout 4.1.0" in your WizBot solution and then reference the WizBot.csproj
        -->
    </ItemGroup>
    
    <!-- Copy shortcut and full strings to output (if they exist) -->
    <ItemGroup>
        <None Update="res.yml;cmds.yml;strings/**">
            <CopyToOutputDirectory>PreserveNewest</CopyToOutputDirectory>
        </None>
    </ItemGroup>
</Project>

Create a MySnek.cs file and add the following contents

using WizBot.Snake;
using WizBot;
using Discord;

public sealed class MySnek : Snek
{
    [cmd]
    public async Task Hello(AnyContext ctx)
    {
        await ctx.Channel.SendMessageAsync($"Hello everyone!");
    }

    [cmd]
    public async Task Hello(AnyContext ctx, IUser target)
    {
        await ctx.ConfirmLocalizedAsync("hello", target);
    }
}

Create res.yml and cmds.yml files with the following contents res.yml

medusa.description: "This is my medusa's description"
hello: "Hello {0}, from res.yml!"

cmds.yml

hello: 
  desc: "This is a basic hello command"
  args:
    - ""
    - "@Someone"

Add NuGet.Config file which will let you use the base WizBot.Medusa package. This file should always look like this and you shouldn't change it

<configuration>
    <packageSources>
        <add key="nuget.org" value="https://api.nuget.org/v3/index.json" protocolVersion="3" />
        <add key="wizbot.cc" value="https://www.myget.org/F/wizbot/api/v3/index.json" protocolVersion="3" />
    </packageSources>
</configuration>

Build it

Build your Medusa into a dll that WizBot can load. In your terminal, type:
- dotnet publish -o bin/medusae/example_medusa /p:DebugType=embedded
Done. You can now try it out in action.

Try it out

Copy the bin/medusae/example_medusa folder into your WizBot's data/medusae/ folder. (WizBot version 4.1.0+)
Load it with .meload example_medusa
In the channel your bot can see, run the following commands to try it out
- .hello and
- .hello @<someone>
Check its information with
- .meinfo example_medusa
Unload it
- .meunload example_medusa
Congrats! You've just made your first medusa!

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Last updated 6 months ago