Chapter 1.3 - Starting to Code

Chapter 1.3 - Starting to Code

Once we have our prerequisites installed, we can begin writing the code necessary to login to Steam and simulate the Steam client. First of all, let's create a new file and call it project1.js. Inside this file, we'll write out the following code.

const SteamUser = require('steam-user');
const client = new SteamUser();

const logOnOptions = {
  accountName: 'your_steam_username',
  password: 'your_steam_password'
};

client.logOn(logOnOptions);

client.on('loggedOn', () => {
  console.log('Logged into Steam');
});

Now, run the program using node project1.js. If you get an error, checkout the troubleshooting section on the main README. If everything works out fine, you should be prompted for your 2FA code (if you have 2FA setup on your account), then you should see the "Logged into Steam" message appear in your command line.

Now let's walk through how this code works step-by-step.

Modules

At the top of our program, we see:

const SteamUser = require('steam-user');
const client = new SteamUser();

Here, we are requireing the steam-user module that we previously installed using NPM, and create a new instance named client with new SteamUser(). We could call the SteamUser and client variables whatever we want, but it's usually fairly standard to name them fairly closely to their module name.

Objects

After requireing our modules and creating instances, we define a new object.

const logOnOptions = {
  accountName: 'your_steam_username',
  password: 'your_steam_password'
};

This logOnOptions object is what we'll use to store our accountName and password as "keys" within the object.

Methods

client.logOn(logOnOptions);

We then pass this logOnOptions object as a parameter to the logOn method of our client, which is, again, an instance of SteamUser. In other words, we're telling our SteamUser instance to login to the Steam network using our username and password.

A method is simply some code in the module which we can use by referencing its name – in this case, logOn. We can tell the method to take some input from us by giving it parameters – the stuff inside of the parentheses.

Events

We then proceed to adding an event listener.

client.on('loggedOn', () => {
  console.log('Logged into Steam');
});

The on method takes two parameters – an event name and a function. When the client emits an event whose name matches the event name we have specified in the on method, the function we provide will be executed.

When client emits an event called loggedOn, we tell it to execute a function, defined in this case using an arrow function. Using an arrow function, or () => { ... }, is almost this same as using function(), but there are some very important differences. We'll get into these differences as they come up. Inside of our function, we tell Node.js to log "Logged into Steam" to our command line.

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Great! We've created our first Steam bot – but it doesn't really do much. It's a little disappointing to login to Steam but get no reward – we don't even change our status to online! Well, we can easily make that change. Let's add some code onto our beautifully simple bot.

We're going to add some code to the loggedOn event listener to make it change its status to online and start playing some good ol' Team Fortress 2.

client.on('loggedOn', () => {
  console.log('Logged into Steam');

  client.setPersona(SteamUser.Steam.EPersonaState.Online);
  client.gamesPlayed(440);
});

If we run the file now using node project1.js, we should see "Logged into Steam" in the command line again, but now if we check our Steam profile, we should be online and playing TF2.

These two lines are all we need to have our bot change its status to online and start playing TF2. The setPersona method can take two parameters, the first being an EPersonaState constant, and the second being a persona name. The persona name is not required, but can be set if you would like to change your Steam name. For example, we could use:

client.setPersona(SteamUser.Steam.EPersonaState.Online, 'andrewda');

to change our Steam name to "andrewda". The gamesPlayed method takes one parameter – a Steam game's appid or a string for a non-Steam game. It can also be used to idle in multiple games at the same time, but we won't get into that during this guide. Do note that you must have the game in order to play it, unless the game is free like TF2.

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