{"id":2590,"date":"2018-01-23T13:33:28","date_gmt":"2018-01-23T13:33:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/telegram-group.com\/?p=452"},"modified":"2018-01-23T13:33:28","modified_gmt":"2018-01-23T13:33:28","slug":"create-bot-telegram","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/telegram-group.com\/en\/blog\/create-bot-telegram\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Create A Bot In Telegram"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bots have always been the limelight in Telegram, which sets it apart, and years ahead of its competitors.<\/span><\/h2>\n

Given the fact that bots, that too developed by third-party developers, have existed on it for such a long time, its bot ecosystem is far more developed than other IM apps such as Messenger.<\/span><\/p>\n

While it\u2019s good to have multiple bots to interact with and make your life easier in Telegram, it\u2019s extremely tempting to create one of your own. Often times, the problem with that is that most tutorials require you to know coding, and the other ones just look too complicated to even try. The challenge isn\u2019t to merely create a bot, but to make a responsive one. These tutorials end up complicating the \u201cresponsive\u201d part, by giving scattered instructions about API and similar things.<\/span><\/p>\n

To help you with your goal of creating a responsive Telegram bot, we have prepared a tutorial which will teach you to set up your own bot using \u201cbotfather\u201d. All you need to do, is follow the simple steps below.<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Open Telegram on your phone.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \u00a0 \u00a02. Tap on the pen symbol in the bottom-right corner. Tap on the magnifier icon and search \u201c@botfather\u201d, and tap on BotFather.<\/span><\/p>\n

    \"boot\"<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \u00a0 3. Tap \u201cStart\u201d and you\u2019ll be presented with a list of commands that you can use with the bot.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \"Screenshot\"<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \u00a0 4.Send \u201c\/newbot\u201d. Send the name that you want to keep for your bot. Now, set a username for your bot. It must end with \u201cbot\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \"Screenshot\"<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \u00a0 5. Congratulations, your bot has now been created. You can either use the link received in the message from BotFather, or search for your bot on Telegram. Save the API token in the message, in an easily accessible place in your device (such as a note-taking app).<\/span><\/p>\n

    \"Screenshot\"<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \u00a0 6. Open Telegram, and search for your bot. Try talking to it.<\/span><\/p>\n

    \"telegram<\/p>\n

    \u00a0 7.Well, let us guess. It didn\u2019t respond at all, did it? That is because it doesn\u2019t know how to respond, yet. Don\u2019t worry, we are here to teach you how to take care of that. <\/span><\/p>\n

    \"telegram<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    All you need to do for this, is to create a bot server which will run in the back and provide your bot the ability to respond.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Setting up a server for your bot<\/b><\/h3>\n

    Every time your bot receives a message, it sends a message, formed as an API call, to the server. The server then processes the message and sends back the pre-determined response.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Long polling and Webhooks are the two ways that your server can receive updates in the form of. <\/span><\/p>\n

    In long polling, messages are periodically checked for and are responded to. It\u2019s slow and not recommended.<\/span><\/p>\n

    On the other hand, Webhooks is fast, responsive, and responds to messages, whenever any are received.<\/span><\/p>\n

    In this tutorial, we are going to be using webhooks. Every webhook, is called with an \u201cupdate object\u201d. For handling your update, you need a server.<\/span><\/p>\n

    While you can use anything you prefer, to create your own server, we personally used <\/span>node.js<\/b>.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Step one, is to initialize your project.<\/span><\/p>\n

    ## Create new directory and enter this directory <\/span><\/p>\n

    mkdir my-telegram-bot<\/span><\/p>\n

    cd my-telegram-bot<\/span><\/p>\n

    ## Now, initialize the npm project<\/span><\/p>\n

    npm init<\/span><\/p>\n

    You\u2019ll now get a package.json file. The next step is installing your dependencies. It can be done by the following command:<\/span><\/p>\n

    npm install –save express axios body-parser<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u201cexpress\u201d is the application server that we are using, \u201caxios\u201d is the http client and \u201cbody-parser\u201d will support us in analyzing the response received from every request.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Now, create a new file, titled \u201cindex.js\u201d:<\/span><\/p>\n

    var express = require(‘express’);<\/span><\/p>\n

    var app = express();<\/span><\/p>\n

    var bodyParser = require(‘body-parser’);<\/span><\/p>\n

    const axios = require(‘axios’)<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    app.use(bodyParser.json()); \/\/ for parsing application\/json<\/span><\/p>\n

    app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0extended: true<\/span><\/p>\n

    })); \/\/ for parsing application\/x-www-form-urlencoded<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \/\/This is the route the API will call in case of a reponse<\/span><\/p>\n

    app.post(‘\/new-message’, function(req, res) {<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0const {message} = req.body<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \u00a0\/\/Each message contains “chat\u201d and a “text” object, which has an “id” that is the chat id<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \u00a0if (!message || message.text.toLowerCase().indexOf(‘juju’) <0) {<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\/\/ In case a message is not present, or if our message does not have the wordw juju in it, do nothing and return an empty response<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0return res.end()<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0}<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \u00a0\/\/ If we’ve gotten this far, it means that we have received a message containing the wordw “juju”.<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\/\/ Respond by hitting the telegram bot API and responding to the approprite chat_id with the wordw “Abhi”<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\/\/ Remember to use your own API toked instead of the one below \u00a0“https:\/\/api.telegram.org\/bot<your_api_token>\/sendMessage”<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0axios.post(‘https:\/\/api.telegram.org\/bot270485614:AAHfiqksKZ8WmR2zSjiQ7_v4TMAKdiHm9T0\/sendMessage’, {<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0chat_id: message.chat.id,<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0text: ‘Abhi’<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0})<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0.then(response => {<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\/\/ We get here if the message was successfully posted<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0console.log(‘Message posted’)<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0res.end(‘ok’)<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0})<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0.catch(err => {<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\/\/ …and here if it was not<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0console.log(‘Error :’, err)<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0res.end(‘Error :’ + err)<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0})<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    });<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \/\/ Finally, start our server<\/span><\/p>\n

    app.listen(3000, function() {<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0console.log(‘Telegram app listening on port 3000!’);<\/span><\/p>\n

    });<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    By running node index.js, you can run this server on the local machine. If you get the message \u201cTelegram app listening on port 3000!\u201d on your console, then everything has been done right.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Deploying your service<\/b><\/h3>\n

    Again, just like in the case of a server, it\u2019s upon you to deploy your server any way you want, but we prefer to use the service <\/span>now<\/b>.<\/span><\/p>\n

    First, install <\/span>now<\/b> on the system.<\/span><\/p>\n

    npm install -g now<\/span><\/p>\n

    Now, add a start script to the package.json file.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Our file looks like this:<\/span><\/p>\n

    {<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0“name”: “telegram-bot”,<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0“version”: “1.0.0”,<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0“description”: “”,<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0“main”: “index.js”,<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0“scripts”: {<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0“test”: “echo \\”Error: no test specified\\” && exit 1″<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0},<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0“author”: “FrankJonas <frankjonas@gmail.com> “,<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0“license”: “ISC”<\/span><\/p>\n

    }<\/span><\/p>\n

    Time to add a start script so that you get:<\/span><\/p>\n

    {<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0“name”: “telegram-bot”,<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0“version”: “1.0.0”,<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0“description”: “”,<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0“main”: “index.js”,<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0“scripts”: {<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0“test”: “echo \\”Error: no test specified\\” && exit 1″,<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0“start” : “node index.js”<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0},<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0“author”: “Soham Kamani <sohamkamani@gmail.com> (https:\/\/sohamkamani.com)”,<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0“license”: “ISC”<\/span><\/p>\n

    }<\/span><\/p>\n

    Once the script\u2019s been added, run the following command:<\/span><\/p>\n

    now<\/span><\/p>\n

    (Note: run it in the root directory of your project folder i.e. where the package.json file is)<\/span><\/p>\n

    If you are using <\/span>now <\/b>for the first time, you\u2019ll be presented with some instructions for signing in. Follow them, and you\u2019ll get the following: <\/span><\/p>\n