Why is my Discord Bot program returning message.content as empty?

Question

import os
import discord
from discord import Intents
from dotenv import load_dotenv
from chatbot import ChatBot

load_dotenv()
discord_token = os.getenv('DISCORD_TOKEN')

chatbot = ChatBot()

intents = Intents.default()
intents.typing = False
intents.presences = False
intents.messages = True  # Enable the messages intent

client = discord.Client(intents=intents)


chat_history = []

@client.event
async def on_ready():
    print(f'We have logged in as {client.user}')

@client.event
async def on_message(message):
    print("Received a message")  # Add this line
    if message.author == client.user:  # Ignore messages from the bot itself
        return
    print('Received message:', message)
    print(f"Received message content: {message.clean_content}")
    if message.content.startswith('/ask'):
        user_input = message.content[5:].strip()
        print('User input: ', repr(user_input))
        print('Received user input: {}'.format(user_input)) # Print the user's question to the console
        response = chatbot.get_response(user_input, chat_history)
        await message.channel.send(response)




client.run(discord_token)

Console:

We have logged in as ask-Bot#1060 Received a message Received message: <Message id=1117888736563306637 channel= type=<MessageType.default: 0> author=<Member id=940462143654998096 name='Dane W' discriminator='4497' bot=False nick=None guild=> flags=> Received message content:

I typed "/ask tell me about the striking offense of brandon moreno" into Discord. I expected my console to return that value as message.content.

The Discord bot has been given all necessary permissions and exists in the channel I am typing to message into.

Answer 1

You are missing intents.message_content = True in your code. intents.messages is not enough anymore.

Find out more about it here: message_content