Rate-limit calls to an IRC bot

Question

I am working on a IRC bot that has the command !Scouter and it will generate a random number.... I already have that done, what I wanted to make was a cool down system to keep from people spamming it over and over again.

here is my code.

public class Twitchbot extends PircBot {
    Random dice = new Random();
    int number;

    for(int counter=1; counter<=1;counter++) {
        number = 1+dice.nextInt(9001);
        System.out.println(number + " ");
    }

    public Twitchbot() {
        this.setName("Blah");
    }

    public void onMessage(String channel, String sender, String login, String hostname, String message) {
       if (message.equalsIgnoreCase("!Scouter")) {
           sendMessage(channel,": The time is now " + sender + number);
           for(int counter=1; counter<=1;counter++) {
              number = 1+dice.nextInt(9001);
              System.out.println(number + " ");
              try {
                 Thread.sleep(5000);
              } catch(InterruptedException ex) {
                Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
              }
           }
       }
    }
}

I tried using this code for a cool down

 try {
    Thread.sleep(5000);
 } catch(InterruptedException ex) {
     Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
 }

but all it did is do the code after 5 seconds of sleeping. I don't want the command !Scouter to register during that cool down. is there a better way of doing it?

Answer 1

You could save the current system-time on a successfull call using:

lastCall = System.currentTimeMillis();

and before, you check

if(System.currentTimeMillis() - lastCall >= DELAY)

where DELAY is a time in milliseconds (1 second equals 1000 milliseconds).

if that statement is true, set lastCall to the current time:

lastCall = System.currentTimeMillis();

and call the normal code.

---

It would look something like this:

long lastCall = 0L; //Initializing 

public void onMessage(String channel, String sender,
        String login, String hostname, String message) {

   if (message.equalsIgnoreCase("!Scouter")) {
       if(System.currentTimeMillis() - lastCall >= 5000)
       {
           lastCall = System.currentTimeMillis(); // Set lastCall again
           sendMessage(channel,": The time is now " + sender + number);
           for(int counter=1; counter<=1;counter++) {
             number = 1+dice.nextInt(9001);
             System.out.println(number + " ");
           }
       }
   }
}