Migrating from discord.py

After the discontinuation of discord.py, many forks of the API wrapper branched onward to maintain the library, in order to keep it updated with the latest features and Discord API changes - disnake is one such fork.

Thus, if you’ve chosen disnake as your fork of choice in order to implement interactions/components and other features, this page will help you understand the changes in syntax, and aim for making your migrating process as smooth as possible.

Differences between libraries

disnake is based on discord.py 2.0, which had major syntax changes from its previous version. Therefore, if you’re shifting to disnake from a version of discord.py lower than 2.0, you will have to make some important syntax changes in your code. You can refer [this page][breakingchanges] for the full list of breaking changes in discord.py 2.0, though we will list some primary API reference changes here:

  • Methods and attributes that returned TextChannel, etc can now return Thread.

  • Attributes that returned Asset are renamed, e.g. attributes ending with _url (i.e. avatar_url) are changed to avatar.url. User.avatar returns None in case the default avatar is used.

  • on_presence_update replaces on_member_update for updates to Member.status and Member.activities.

  • Webhooks are changed significantly: WebhookAdapter is removed, and synchronous requests using requests is now inside SyncWebhook.

  • edit methods no longer updates cache and instead returns modified instance.

  • Client.logout is removed; use Client.close instead.

  • Message.type for replies are now MessageType.reply.

  • Reaction.custom_emoji property is changed to Reaction.is_custom_emoji method.

  • missing_perms attributes and arguments are renamed to missing_permissions.

  • Many arguments are now specified as positional-only or keyword-only; e.g. oauth_url now takes keyword-only arguments, and methods starting with get_ or fetch_ take positional-only arguments.

Changing requirements

In order to avoid conflicts between the libraries, you must uninstall discord.py. You can do so by using the following command in your terminal:

py -3 -m pip uninstall discord

python3 -m pip uninstall discord

python3 -m pip uninstall discord

To install disnake, you can follow the instructions on this page.

Rewriting your bot

As discussed above, rewriting your code from an older discord.py version to disnake will require some major syntax changes. But if you’re migrating from discord.py 2.0, all that’s left now is changing the library references throughout the code, since the base code for both the libraries is practically the same.

There are three ways to switch between libraries:

Replace discord with disnake

  1. Import disnake into your code (and delete the lines where you import discord).

import disnake
from disnake.ext import commands

  1. With your favorite editor, replace every discord reference in your code with disnake.

Import disnake as discord

Import disnake as discord into your code (and delete the lines where you import discord). This reduces the effort of changing all references throughout your code.

import disnake as discord
from disnake.ext import commands

Using the discord shim

Using the discord shim allows you to use disnake, without the need to import it directly or importing it as discord - thus eliminating the need to change your code at all. To install the shim, you can use the following command in your terminal:

py -3 -m pip install disnake[discord]

python3 -m pip install disnake[discord]

python3 -m pip install disnake[discord]

Warning

We don’t recommend using the shim, as it is updated less frequently and may break the behaviour of interactions/components in some cases. If possible, proceed with one of the other two procedures mentioned.

And that’s it! Since disnake is a fork of discord.py, it inherits a lot of similarities - though we recommend you to always run your code to fix any possible issues.