Discord MarketBot for EVE Online

General information

The purpose of this bot is to get fast information on the EVE Online market for specific items and in specific regions.

It uses a combination of data from Fuzzwork and the EVE Swagger Interface provided by CCP.

Usage

Add this bot to your Discord server! or alternatively you can try it out first on my dev server.

Bot commands

Commands can be found on the MarketBot website's commands page.

Discord permissions

Required permissions can be found on the MarketBot website's permissions page.

Screenshots

MarketBot in action!

Logging

This bot keeps records of issued commands, this data is used to monitor performance, usage and accuracy of the bot.

What information does it save?

• The channel in which the command was issued.
  • For counting how many unique channels/servers this bot is active in.
• The username and id of the user who issued a command to the bot.
  • This helps me count how many unique channels the bot is active in, because the above logging does not include Direct Message channels
• The item-parameter of the command and the item the bot did the search for.
  • For monitoring the accuracy of the bot's guessing system and tracking which items are most often searched for. This data will allow me to build shortcuts in the guessing system to improve performance.
• The region-parameter of the command and the region the bot did the search for.
  • For counting which regions are most often selected to search in. I have a feeling it'll be The Forge, but with this data I can build new functionality that can search a select few regions at the same time to get you the best item price. It is impractical to have this feature search all regions in New Eden.

Feature requests

Please open an issue if you have any feature ideas for this bot or are missing any functionality.

Alternatively you can contact me in EVE Online: Ionaru Otsada, or on Discord: @ionaru.

Self-hosting

It is possible to self-host this bot. It requires Docker with the Compose v2 plugin.

Step one: Creating a bot user

1. Go to https://discord.com/developers/applications and create a new application.
2. On General Information, copy the Application ID and the Public Key.
3. Go to Bot, then Reset Token, and copy the token. Discord only shows it once.
4. Under OAuth2 > URL Generator, select the bot and applications.commands scopes, and the View Channel, Send Messages, Embed Links and Attach Files bot permissions.
5. Open the generated URL in your browser and add the bot to your server.

Step two: Installing the bot

1. Install Docker Engine, which includes the Compose v2 plugin.

2. Clone this repository, or download and extract it.

3. Create the configuration file. MarketBot reads its credentials from an ini file rather than from the environment:

   mkdir -p /absolute/path/to/your/config
   cp config/marketbot.template.ini /absolute/path/to/your/config/marketbot.ini

   Edit that copy and fill in the [discord] token, id and key from step one.

4. Create a .env file in the root of the checkout:

   MARKETBOT_CONFIG_VOLUME=/absolute/path/to/your/config
   MARKETBOT_DATA_VOLUME=/absolute/path/to/your/data

5. Start the bot:

   docker compose --project-name marketbot --env-file "$PWD/.env" --file deploy/compose.yaml up -d

   The --env-file flag is not optional. The Compose file lives in deploy/, so Compose looks for a .env next to it and will not find the one in the root of the checkout. Without the flag the bot runs :latest against empty Docker named volumes, with neither your configuration nor your database.

6. Check that it came up:

   docker compose --project-name marketbot --env-file "$PWD/.env" --file deploy/compose.yaml logs -f

Run docker compose ... config instead of up at any point to print the fully resolved configuration. That is the quickest way to confirm your directories are what you expect: both volumes should show as type: bind pointing at your paths. If either says type: volume, the .env is not being read.

The first start is slow. MarketBot downloads and caches every EVE Online item, region and system before it connects to Discord, which takes a few minutes. Later starts reuse the cache in /app/data.

Environment variables

Variable	Required	Description
MARKETBOT_CONFIG_VOLUME	No	Directory holding marketbot.ini. Defaults to a Docker named volume.
MARKETBOT_DATA_VOLUME	No	Where MarketBot keeps its database and caches. Defaults to a Docker named volume.
MARKETBOT_GIT_REVISION	No	Image tag to run. Defaults to latest.
DEBUG	No	Set to market-bot* or * for extra logging output. Note the hyphen.
DISABLE_TRACKING_CYCLE	No	Set to true to stop the periodic price-tracking checks.

Everything else, including the Discord credentials, lives in config/marketbot.ini.

Both volume variables must be either left unset, which uses the named volumes declared in the Compose file, or set to an absolute host path. A relative path such as ./data resolves against deploy/, not the root of the checkout. The container runs as the unprivileged node user, so a host directory needs to be writable by UID 1000.

A bind-mounted config directory hides the template that ships inside the image, so marketbot.ini has to be there before the first start. The bot says so and exits if it is missing.

What lives where

/app/data holds the SQLite database (marketbot.db) with the command log and the price-tracking subscriptions, the cached item, region and system lists, the ESI response cache, and the graph images generated by /history. Only the database is irreplaceable; everything else rebuilds itself.

A note on architecture

The prebuilt ghcr.io/ionaru/marketbot images are linux/amd64 only. On other architectures the pull fails with a manifest error, and you will need to build the image locally instead:

docker compose --project-name marketbot --env-file "$PWD/.env" --file deploy/compose.yaml up -d --build

Contact me in EVE Online: Ionaru Otsada or on Discord: @ionaru if you need any assistance.

To-Do & Ideas

• Support for searches in Jita, Amarr & other trade hubs
• % difference between lowest sell order and highest buy order
• Show volume in price history
• Show deviation between low and high in price history
• EVE Online quotes in bot (error) messages
• Darker graphs to better match Discord colors
• More information in price command output (low/high)

Developer information

Want to contribute? Awesome! See CONTRIBUTING.md to get started.

MarketBot is written in TypeScript and requires Node.js 24 or newer.

npm ci         # Install dependencies
npm test       # Lint and run the unit tests
npm run build  # Compile TypeScript to dist/
npm start      # Build and run the bot

Running the bot outside Docker still needs config/marketbot.ini; copy it from config/marketbot.template.ini in the same directory.

The /history command renders its graph by screenshotting an SVG with Puppeteer, so it needs a Chromium available. Inside the image that is Debian's chromium package, pointed at with PUPPETEER_EXECUTABLE_PATH; locally, npx puppeteer browsers install chrome gets you one.

Special thanks