discord.py 1.7.2 - How to private message user

Question

discord.py 1.7.2

use case:

When a user joins my channel, I save their discord id in my database. If a user sent a message with the word $sub foo they subscribe to one of my services. When they subscribe to this service. They idea is for them to get a private message every now and again based on the type

Code

import discord,os,asyncio
from discord.ext import commands, tasks
from Entity.notifications import Notification
from dotenv import load_dotenv

from discord.utils import get
bot = commands.Bot(command_prefix='$')

@bot.event
async def on_ready():
    print('Bot is ready')

@tasks.loop(seconds=10)
async def user_notification():
    print("foo") ##terminal shows the word foo
    await bot.wait_until_ready()
    user_sub_notifications= Notification().get_active_user_sub_notification()

    if user_sub_notifications:
        for notification in user_sub_notifications:
            if "user_discord_id" in notification:
                #get user
                user = get(bot.get_all_members(), id=notification['user_discord_id'])
                #get the message to sent to the user
                message = notification['message']
                #private message the user
                #bot.send_message(user, message)
                
    await asyncio.sleep(10)

load_dotenv() 
user_notificarion.start()
bot.run(os.getenv('DISCORD_TOKEN'))

I have tried the follow

user = get(bot.get_all_members(), id=notification['discord_id']) #got NONE
bot.send_message(notification['user_discord_id'], message) ##bot has not attribute send_message

how can I private message the user? Thank you

Answer 1

Thanks to Rapptz from the discord.py github who answered this question. All credit goes to him.

In v1.7 you need to fetch the user first:

user = bot.get_user(user_id) or await bot.fetch_user(user_id)
await user.send('whatever')

In the future in v2.0 (still in development) you'll be able to open a DM directly via user ID:

dm = await client.create_dm(user_id)
await dm.send('whatever')

the actual method which works is the fetch_user