How do you send a message in TwitchIO that's not a response to a command?

Question

I'm setting up a python TwitchIO chat bot. The getting started example has this:

async def event_message(self, message):
    print(message.content)
    await self.handle_commands(message)

@commands.command(name='test')
async def my_command(self, ctx):
    await ctx.send(f'Hello {ctx.author.name}!')

If the incoming message is a command (e.g. !test), a message is sent back to the channel with ctx.send().

I'd like the option to send a message back to the channel (based on come criteria) whenever any message is received, not just commands. For example:

async def event_message(self, message):
    print(message.content)
    if SOMETHING:
        SEND_MESSAGE_HERE
    await self.handle_commands(message)

I can't figure out how to do some type of .send to make that happen. This answer: TwitchIO: How to send a chat message? show this:

chan = bot.get_channel("channelname")
loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()
loop.create_task(chan.send("Send this message"))

I tried that and the bot sent a ton of messages instantly and got timed out for an hour.

So, the question is: How do you send a message back to the channel inside event_message

Answer 1

A command passes you a Context (an instance of of Messageable, which defines send()). A Channel is also a Messageable, thus it has a send(). So if your Bot instance is bot:

bot.connected_channels[0].send('...')

Will send a message to the first channel the bot is connected to.

Answer 2

I found an alternative. I replace the message with a command that I invented for the purpose. The name of the command is "z" but it could have been anything

async def event_message(self, message):
    if message.echo:
        return

    message.content = f"#z {message.content}" # add command name before message

    await self.handle_commands(message)

@commands.command()
async def z(self, ctx: commands.Context):
    print(f"Original message is {ctx.message.content[3:]}\n")