MessageContentBuilder - easily create message content with formatting

[DanieliusDev]

Which application or package is this feature request for?

builders

Feature

When creating message content, code can look very messy and possibly unclear. For example:

// this is a VERY simple example, code may be far larger than this with complex logic
interaction.reply(`${heading("Here is a list:")}\n${unorderedList(["something 1", "something 2"])}`);

Note: technically you could make a content variable and use += to make it easier to read (useful for conditionally adding content) but it can still be kind of tedious.

My proposal is MessageContentBuilder which guarantees correctly formatted message content - no more forgetting to add \n and so on.

This is what the above example could look like using this builder:

const content = new MessageContentBuilder()
  .addHeading("Here is a list:")
  .addUnorderedList(
    "Something 1",
    "Something 2"
  );

// Maybe later on discord.js can directly take MessageContentBuilder same way it can take EmbedBuilder
interaction.reply(content.toString());

This a very basic example so it doesn't show its full potential, you may understand the potential in the api example below.

Ideal solution or implementation

I already have my own implementation in my discord bot codebase, and it works like this:

• MessageContentBuilder is the main builder. It handles things like adding headings (addHeading), adding new lines (addLine) and adding lists (addUnorderedList, addOrderedList).
• MessageContentLineBuilder is a builder for each line of message content (used in MessageContentBuilder.addLine). It has methods like addText, addBoldText, addUnderlinedText, addSpoilerText and more.

Here is a simple api preview with some of the possible message content formatting.

type MessageContentLineBuilderFunction = (builder: MessageContentLineBuilder) => void;

interface MessageContentBuilder {
  #content: string;

  constructor(): MessageContentBuilder;

  addLine(line?: string | MessageContentLineBuilderFunction |  MessageContentLineBuilder): MessageContentBuilder;

  addHeading(text: string | MessageContentLineBuilderFunction |  MessageContentLineBuilder, level?: HeadingLevel): MessageContentBuilder;

  addUnorderedList(...items: (string | MessageContentLineBuilderFunction |  MessageContentLineBuilder)[]): MessageContentBuilder;

  addOrderedList(...items: (string | MessageContentLineBuilderFunction |  MessageContentLineBuilder)[]): MessageContentBuilder;

  toString(): string;
}

interface MessageContentLineBuilder {
  #line: string;

  constructor(): MessageContentLineBuilder;

  addText(text: string): MessageContentLineBuilder;

  addBoldText(text: string): MessageContentLineBuilder;

  addUnderlinedText(text: string): MessageContentLineBuilder;

  addSpoilerText(text: string): MessageContentLineBuilder;

  toString(): string;
}

Alternative solutions or implementations

No response

Other context

I would be happy to open up a pr and implement this, im just looking for feedback for this api.