Reaction timestamps [per user]

[AlexandrosGounis]

Our bot needs to know when users reacted on a given message. Essentially, all we need is a timestamp per user reaction. My understanding is that this is not currently supported. If this is true, would it be possible to add this feature?

[amatsagu]

Making all reactions now also register creation timestamp would create just an extra garbage data that in 99.99999% cases wouldn't be used, making discord gateway/api send more data than needed. If your bot needs to know when specific reaction got added - your best bet is to listen to correct gateway event and cache it on your side. You won't be able to get records from past but assuming your bot works 24/7 - you should get all reaction timestamps counting from moment you implement it which should be enough.

[amatsagu]

Assuming you want to cache like absolutely every reaction - you're probably gonna end up saving it into database, overflowing it with a LOT of records since people on bigger servers tends to use a lot reactions.

[jagrosh]

Reactions are very finicky, sometimes failing to load or display on larger guilds, and occasionally failing to work entirely. If you currently use reactions for a system by which users provide input on a bot-produced message, it would probably be worth re-writing your system to use a button and store the timestamps of the interaction.

[amatsagu]

Yeah, this sounds good. After all buttons got added to replace those buggy emojis. You can just safe timestamp of all moments when somebody trigger interaction. Only downside to this idea is that button interaction stays "listening" for first 15 minutes and then stops responding. For most things it should be ok but some mechanisms may want to "listen" for longer time than this.

[AlmostSuspense]

no, buttons don't expire

[jagrosh]

As stated, buttons don't expire after 15 minutes, interaction tokens do. A user clicking a button creates a brand-new interaction (with its own token) every time.

Also to clarify what I said in my original message, the biggest limitation of this system is if you need the reaction/button on a message that the bot didn't send, as bots can't add buttons to other users' messages.