Quickstart

A quick start guide for steam.py

Installation

Installation should be as simple as:

# Linux/macOS
python3 -m pip install -U steamio
# Windows
py -m pip install -U steamio

The Basics

steam.py being heavily inspired by and based on discord.py revolves around events. An event is something you listen for and then respond to.

For example, when a trade happens, you will receive an event about it that you can respond to.

A quick example to showcase how events work:

import steam


class MyClient(steam.Client):
    async def on_ready(self) -> None:
        print("Logged in as", self.user)

    async def on_trade(self, trade: steam.TradeOffer) -> None:
        if not trade.is_our_offer():
            print(f"Received trade: #{trade.id} from", trade.user)


client = MyClient()
client.run("username", "password")

A Minimal Bot

Let’s make a bot that replies to a specific message and walk you through it.

It looks something like this:

import steam


class MyClient(steam.Client):
    async def on_ready(self) -> None:
        print(f"We have logged in as {self.user}")

    async def on_message(self, message: steam.Message) -> None:
        if message.author == self.user:
            return

        if message.content.startswith("$hello"):
            await message.channel.send("Hello!")


client = MyClient()
client.run("username", "password")

Lets walk through what this does:

1. We import the steam module, if this raises a ModuleNotFoundError see Installation again.

2. We then subclass steam.Client to create our own client MyClient.

3. We register an event steam.Client.on_ready() in MyClient, which will be called after the client is ready. This event will print once we log in to inform us as such.

4. We then register another event steam.Client.on_message(), when doing so we need to be careful to check the steam.Message.author as steam.py fires an event for every message sent. After this we can check the steam.Message.content to see if the message startswith the correct phrase of “$hello” to send back our reply of “Hello!”.

5. Finally, we instantiate MyClient and use steam.Client.run() it with our steam username and password.

After saving this as example_bot.py not called steam.py as it will interfere with the library we can run the bot and watch it come online using:

# Linux/macOS
python example_bot.py
# Windows
py -3 example_bot.py

A Minimal Bot with ext.commands

Since code like this is so common steam.py comes with a powerful commands extension to aid with creating commands.

from steam.ext import commands


class MyBot(commands.Bot):
    async def on_ready(self) -> None:
        print(f"We have logged in as {self.user}")

    @commands.command
    async def hello(self, ctx: commands.Context) -> None:
        await ctx.send("Hello!")


bot = MyBot(command_prefix="$")
bot.run("username", "password")

This will perform the same as the example using steam.Client.on_message().

Except with some key differences:

1. We import steam.ext.commands to handle commands.

2. We subclass steam.ext.commands.Bot to inherit command parsing functionality.

3. We swap out the if message.content.startswith("$hello"): line for a command that is registered with the command’s name using the steam.ext.commands.command().

4. Inside the hello command we are able to access the context of the invocation using the ctx parameter. This allows us to use the steam.ext.commands.Context.send() to send the same response.

5. When instantiating the bot we pass the command_prefix key-word argument to make the bot only respond when the message’s content starts with the prefix “$”.