How do I get the last message sent by a specific user? - discord.js

Question

I'm currently running discord.js v13 and I'm trying to find a way of finding the last message sent by a specific user. So far, I've come up with the idea of iterating on an array of user IDs, then iterating on each channel and comparing each timestamp with the pervious timestamp found until it finds the latest one and stores it. However, this doesn't seem to work and I just keep getting today's date for ALL the users even though the majority of them haven't sent a message today.
My Code:
for(var i = 0; i < array_of_users.length; i++) {
for (const channel of message.guild.channels.cache.values()) {
if (channel.isText()) {
let messages = await channel.messages.fetch().catch(e => console.log(e));
messages.each((msg) => {
if (msg.author.id === array_of_users[i]) {
if(x == 0) {
old_date = new Date(msg.createdTimestamp).toDateString();
snowflakes.push(old_date);
x += 1;
} else {
var new_date = new Date(msg.createdTimestamp).toDateString();
let splitOld = old_date.split(" ");
let splitNew = new_date.split(" ");
if(parseInt(splitNew[3]) >= parseInt(splitOld[3])) {
year = splitNew[3];
if(getMonthInt(splitNew[1]) >= getMonthInt(splitOld[1]) ) {
monthC = splitNew[1];
if(getDayInt(splitNew[2]) >= getDayInt(splitOld[2])) {
dayNum = splitNew[2];
} else {
dayNum = splitOld[2];
}
} else {
monthC = splitOld[1];
dayNum = splitOld[2];
}
} else {
year = splitOld[3];
dayNum = splitOld[2];
monthC = splitOld[1];
}
}
}
})
}
}
console.log(`${monthC}-${dayNum}-${year}`);
}
The code above I've written to sort the dates and get the latest one, However something is wrong that it keeps getting the latest date and sometimes even future dates that haven't occurred yet. I can't seem to find the issue but I am speculating that it is originating around the if (msg.author.id === array_of_users[i]) area.

Answer 1

I'm trying to find a way of finding the last message sent by a specific user.
Discord.JS provides no 'built in' way of doing this. The best you can do is by grabbing their messages and comparing each of them to one another until you've exhausted your options and are left with the optimal result. So your approach is (more or less) correct, although your implementation does have some function errors that are throwing you off.
So far, I've come up with the idea of iterating on an array of user IDs, then iterating on each channel and comparing each timestamp with the pervious timestamp found until it finds the latest one and stores it.
If you only are only looking for the most recent message for a specific User, then it is redundant to be dealing with an Array of Users altogether.
However, this doesn't seem to work and I just keep getting today's date for ALL the users even though the majority of them haven't sent a message today.
There are a number of errors in your approach which could be causing this. Here's a quick few of the more generalized / lack-of-experience related errors in your solution for you to work on:
The else block where you're comparing days split up from timestamps is super convoluted. Why not just use the createdTimestamp value from the Message instance itself, then reconstruct the whole monthC-dayNum-year thing again later on using that if you need to?
You're likely going to be hitting Discord's Rate limits (rather frequently) with your script as-is. To put it in perspective, you're basically spamming requests to their API for the next X messages in channels [A, B, ...ZA, ZB] repeatedly. You can optimize this a lot by making logical inferences as to when you can safely 'exclude' a Channel from your search (e.g. if the most recent message you've found in channel X was created on Jun 18 2022, and most recent message found in channel Y was created on Mar 13 2022, you can safely avoid asking Discord for more Messages for channel Y, as it won't have any information relevant to your use case). Writing some additional logic here will pay dividends to you both in how quickly your function can execute, and how frustrating it is to debug once Discord gets upset with you for your small-scale DDOS attack against them.
If I was to solve this problem, the way I would do it would be to employ the following logic:
Given GuildMember X, grab all the Channels in the Guild they belong to.
Filter those Channels so you're only working on TextChannels.
Recursively iterate through those Channels, keeping track of the 'latest message' found belonging to GuildMember X in that Channel (when/if found). Whenever you find a new message belonging to GuildMember X in Channel Y, check if that beats the most recent message found across the entire set thus far. If so, update the best message for the set accordingly. Continually filter the Channels you're working with as you go to exclude Channels that logically cannot hold anything relevant to your search-- any time you finish a recursion, you can go back over the set of Channels and look for any one where the 'best message' in that channel does not beat the current best message. Since you're fetching 'backwards in time' (asking Discord for progressively older and older messages as you continue to recurse), any time the best message in a given channel does not beat the best message across the entire set, you can be certain that the channel does not hold the droids that you are looking for. You're only going to be fetching even older messages than the earliest one already fetched if you continue to look in that Channel, which makes that Channel irrelevant to you at that point.
Lucky for you, I had some time to kill while travelling today, and for whatever reason trying to find an optimal solution to your problem interested me enough to give it a proper shot. The tips I wrote above should help you understand the code below, and if not, leave a comment and maybe I can help you out. Here's how I would solve your problem, while paying attention to logical exclusion and avoiding doing unnecessary work / API calls.
https://codesandbox.io/s/holy-surf-50vpmf?file=/index.js