Introduction

This repository provides a python library to make it easy to create telegram bots using the python telegram API.

The basic idea is that you can define a function similar to the way you would with the click framework and then automatically convert that into a form suitable for telegram.

Ideally, creating commands in a telegram bot should but just as easy as writing a python function.

Getting Started

The following describes how to get started as quickly as possible.

Install via pip

Do the usual pip install tbotg.

Use BotFather to create a bot

First, use the botfather to create a bot:

1. Go to BotFather in a Telegram chat.
2. Type /newbot to request a new bot.
3. Type the desired name when BotFather asks you for it.
4. Save the token BotFather gives you in ~/.ox_secrets.csv as

name,category,values,notes
token,YOUR_BOT_NAME,YOUR_TOKEN

• The ~/.ox_secrets.csv file is a simple CSV file used to manage secret information such as your telegram bot token.

Create a python file for your command

Next, create a python file for your bot. For example, you could create a python file named mybot.py as shown below:

"Example to show how to use tbotg"

import click

from tbotg.core.main_bot import TelegramMainBot
from tbotg.core.bcmds import ClickCmd


@click.command()
@click.option('--say', '/say', help='What to say')
@click.option('--count', '/count', type=int, help='How many times to repeat.')
def repeatntimes(say, count):
    "Repeat something N times."
    return 'I will repeat it %i times: %s' % (
        count, ', '.join([say.upper()] * count))


class MyBot(TelegramMainBot):
    """Example bot.
    """

    @classmethod
    def make_cmds(cls):
        "Make commands for bot."

        return [ClickCmd(repeatntimes)]

Start the server

Run the serve using the tcli script provided by tbotg via the following command line:

tcli serve --bot_cls MyBot --module 'mybot' --with_name ${YOUR_BOT_NAME}

where ${YOUR_BOT_NAME} is the name of the bot you created with BotFather

Note that you will need your PYTHONPATH set properly for python to find your mybot.py module. For example, you could do something like

export PYTHONPATH=${PYTHONPATH}:`dirname /path/to/mybot.py`

Test the command on telegram

To test your command,

1. Start a chat with your bot on telegram.
2. Do /help to see available commands.
3. Do /repeatntimes to run your command
4. Click on the parameter buttons to set the values of say and count.
5. Click the confirm button to run the command.

Note that you can also include command line arguments when calling a command in Telegram via something like:

/repeatntimes /say hi

and that option will be automatically filled in. Note that it is best to use a leading slash (/) for these kinds of options and not the usual double hyphen (--) since some versions of Telegram auto-replace double hyphens with a “long dash”.