Persistent Views

You may have noticed that after an application restart, your views will no longer work, even if the timeout did not expire. The solution to this problem are persistent views.

Persistent views are views that persist and keep functioning, even after an application restart.

Two conditions need to be met in order for a view to be considered persistent: - The view must have a timeout of None. - All items attached to the view must have a custom_id provided to it.

There are two variants of them, bound and unbound. Let’s explore the differences between the two.

Warning

miru.views.View.message will in all cases be None for persistent views.

Unbound

Unbound persistent views are the simpler of the two, they provide simple stateless logic, and are not bound to any one message. They are best suited for views and items that are expected to return the same results regardless of the context.

The limitations for this way of handling persistent views are that you cannot edit the view during runtime, as unbound views have no concept of what message they are attached to.

class Persistence(miru.View):
    def __init__(self) -> None:
        super().__init__(timeout=None)  # Setting timeout to None

    # Providing custom IDs to all items
    @miru.button(label="Button 1", custom_id="my_unique_custom_id_1")
    async def button_one(self, button: miru.Button, ctx: miru.ViewContext) -> None:
        await ctx.respond("You pressed button 1.")

    @miru.button(label="Button 2", custom_id="my_unique_custom_id_2")
    async def button_two(self, button: miru.Button, ctx: miru.ViewContext) -> None:
        await ctx.respond("You pressed button 2.")


bot = hikari.GatewayBot("...")
miru.install(bot)

# Handle the restarting of our views on application startup
@bot.listen()
async def startup_views(event: hikari.StartedEvent) -> None:
    # You must reinstantiate the view in the same state it was before shutdown (e.g. same custom_ids)
    view = Persistence()
    # Restart the listener for the view after application startup
    await view.start()


@bot.listen()
async def buttons(event: hikari.GuildMessageCreateEvent) -> None:

    if not event.is_human:
        return

    me = bot.get_me()

    if me.id in event.message.user_mentions_ids:
        view = Persistence()
        message = await event.message.respond(
            "This is a persistent view, and works after bot restarts!",
            components=view,
        )

        # You do not need to start unbound persistent views, as a single listener handles
        # all views of the same type.


bot.run()

Try restarting the bot after sending your view, your buttons should keep working!

Note

In practice, you want to most likely use some form of database to store your custom_ids, and load the values from it on application startup, to avoid conflicts with multiple views using the same custom_id.

Bound

Bound views are different in the sense that they are bound to a specific message instead of globally handling interactions for every view of the same type. To create a bound view, instead of an unbound one, simply pass a message ID to View.start(). This also allows for the view to be edited during runtime.

Warning

If you pass a message ID instead of a message object to View.start(), View.message will be set to None. If this is undesirable, try fetching the message before passing it instead.

class Persistence(miru.View):
    def __init__(self) -> None:
        super().__init__(timeout=None)  # Setting timeout to None

    # Providing custom IDs to all items
    @miru.button(label="Button 1", custom_id="my_unique_custom_id_1")
    async def button_one(self, button: miru.Button, ctx: miru.ViewContext) -> None:
        await ctx.respond("You pressed button 1.")

    @miru.button(label="Button 2", custom_id="my_unique_custom_id_2")
    async def button_two(self, button: miru.Button, ctx: miru.ViewContext) -> None:
        await ctx.respond("You pressed button 2.")


bot = hikari.GatewayBot("...")
miru.install(bot)


@bot.listen()
async def startup_views(event: hikari.StartedEvent) -> None:

    view = Persistence()

    # For this example, you should store your message IDs in a database
    # along with your custom IDs.
    message_id = example_database_fetching_the_id()

    # Restart the listener for the view after application startup
    # This view will only accept interactions coming from this specific message.
    await view.start(message_id)


@bot.listen()
async def buttons(event: hikari.GuildMessageCreateEvent) -> None:

    if not event.is_human:
        return

    me = bot.get_me()

    if me.id in event.message.user_mentions_ids:
        view = Persistence()
        message = await event.message.respond(
            "This is a persistent component menu, and works after bot restarts!",
            components=view,
        )
        # Bound persistent views however need to be started for every message.
        await view.start(message)


bot.run()