Step 1
WARNING: This bot will operate on the reddit account used to create it. Thus, if you want your bot to run on its own reddit account, you need to create a new reddit account and then do the following steps.
Step 2
Click 'Create Another App'
Step 3
You will be presented with this screen:
- Name: Enter the name of what you want your bot to be called
The next bit is slightly more complicated:
- Web App: This is normally a web site that exists already, which allows the users to log into reddit, normally through OAuth.
- Installed App: This is something like a phone app that each user of the app installs on their phone, so it would use one API key, but there are lots of different devices making requests for lots of different users.
- Script: This is the easiest one, which doesn't have any session based on tokens (refresh and access tokens).
I'm aware this is not the best explanation / the most in depth. So if you do want to find out more, visit: https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit/wiki/OAuth2-App-Types#script-app.
If you're just making a bot for say moderation or responding to comments or posting on a subreddit then the SCRIPT category is the one for you!
-
Description: A short description of what your bot will do. (This doesn't have to be complicated, just a brief one will do!)
-
About URL: If you have a website related to the app, then you can put the link of this website here. this is NOT REQUIRED.
-
Redirect URI: This is the location that the authorization server will send to the user once the app has been successfully authorised, and granted an authorisation code or access token.
Now, I'm aware this is also another not great description, so for those who are interested, this explains it better: https://www.oauth.com/oauth2-servers/redirect-uris/.
However, what most people use for this field is: http://localhost:8080!
- I know this may be a lot to read, and if you are revisiting this then you may not want to read through all this again, and so an example screenshot would be more useful. So here you go:
Step 4
Once you have clicked 'create app', you will be able to see the following:
I have replaced my client id, client secret and reddit account, for privacy reasons :)
- Now, you have the Client ID and Client Secret for your own bot!
Step 5
There are plenty of very good tutorials on how to do the actual programming of the bot from here. This guide is just intended for you to do the part of the setup on reddit itself. Having said that though, if you want me to do a tutorial on how to do the programming part as well then I can!
One of the tutorials I recommend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAN8b38U_8c. This goes through how to do what I've said in this guide, as well as an example program.
One last thing...
- Reddit bots can be fun to make and aren't hard for beginners to create. However, newly created bots made my beginners have been known to cause issues for subreddit moderators in the past. Therefore, please may anyone new to this please follow the 'bottiquette', which can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/wiki/bottiquette.
I hope this article came in handy for people and maybe clears up some confusion for people :)
Thanks for reading,
~ Tom