README

telegram-bot-sdk

⚠️ Deprecation

This library is deprecated! We recommend to use telegraf/telegraf instead.

To do

Implement HTTPS support for webhook mode
Implement all classes from https://core.telegram.org/bots/api#available-types with their respective parameters as JavaScript classes (ES6 syntax)
Implement all methods from https://core.telegram.org/bots/api#available-methods
Make all methods (e.g. getUpdates) return proper class objects (e.g. Message or InlineQueryResult) instead of plain JSON objects

Usage

Initialization

// Define functions helpCommand, otherCommand, nonCommandCallback and inlineQueryCallback here
const commands = {
    help: helpCommand,
    other: otherCommand
};

const bot = require('telegram-bot-sdk')('yourTokenHere', commands, nonCommandCallback, inlineQueryCallback);

Initializing the module takes 5 paramters (one optional).

token - Your bot's token you received from the BotFather
commands - An object of mapping commands (e.g. help for the /help command) to functions
- receives two arguments, namely the message object itself as well as an array of strings that were separated by a blank space in the message (e.g. /command1 foo bar) will result in ['foo', 'bar'] as second argument to the function that is defined for command1
nonCommandCallback - A function to be invoked if the received message is neither a command (i.e. not starting with a slash) nor an InlineQuery
- receives one argument, namely the message obejct
inlineQueryCallback - A function to be invoked if the received message is an InlineQuery
- receives one argument, namely the inline_query obejct
initialOffset - Optional. Specific offset (https://core.telegram.org/bots/api#getupdates) to receive messages for. Default is 0.

If a new message arrived at Telegram, either one of your command methods, the nonCommand method or the inlineQuery method will be invoked.

Getting updates

You can either use long-polling or webhooks to get updates from the Telegram API. To get more details, please read the Telegram Bot API docs. Webhook mode is the recommended way for production use. However, since it requires a secured HTTPS connection, you will need an SSL certificate as well as a constant IP or domain name for your bot's webserver. Unfortunately, SSL support is not implemented, yet (see To Do section), so you will need a reverse proxy (like nginx or Caddy) between your bot and the internet, that handles encryption for you.

TL:DR: If you're experienced, webhook mode with a reverse proxy is the way to go. However, if that's too complicated, you can also use long-polling mode with way less effort.

// Start listening or polling for updates (use only one of the following lines!)
bot.listen(3000, '127.0.0.1', 'your_bots_token') // Webhook-mode (recommended) (port, path)
bot.getUpdates(); // Polling-mode

Sending a message

var msg = new bot.classes.Message(originalMessage.chat.id, '*Hello Telegram*', 'Markdown');
bot.sendMessage(msg, (err, results) => {
    // do sth.
});
// originalMessage is a message you got as an update where you can extract the chat_id from and send an answer for it

The Message class' constructor takes the same arguments as stated in https://core.telegram.org/bots/api#sendmessage, while the last five are optional.

Sending a keyboard

Also refer to https://core.telegram.org/bots/api#replykeyboardmarkup.

var keyboard = new bot.classes.ReplyKeyboardMarkup(3, true, true, true);
keyboard.addButton(new bot.classes.KeyboardButton('Button First Row Left'));
keyboard.addButton(new bot.classes.KeyboardButton('Button First Row Center'));
keyboard.addButton(new bot.classes.KeyboardButton('Button First Row Right'));
keyboard.addButton(new bot.classes.KeyboardButton('Button Second Row Left'));
keyboard.addButton(new bot.classes.KeyboardButton('Button Second Row Center'));
keyboard.addButton(new bot.classes.KeyboardButton('Button Second Row Right'));

var msg = new bot.classes.Message({
  chat_id: originalMessage.chat.id,
  text: '*Hello Telegram*',
  parse_mode: 'Markdown',
  reply_markup: keyboard
});
bot.sendMessage(msg, (err, results) => {
    // do sth.
});

This will create a keyboard with six buttons over two rows (and therefore three columns).

Answer an inline query

See https://core.telegram.org/bots/inline Note / Todo: This method is not properly implemented, because instead of accepting an InlineQueryResult object it accepts the single parameters. We want to support every single type of inline query results.

var answer = new bot.classes.InlineQueryResultArticle('1', 'Add a new item.', new bot.classes.InputTextMessageContent('Add *foo* to my collection', 'Markdown'));
bot.answerInlineQuery(query.id, [answer], (result) => {
    // do sth.
});
// query is an inline_query you got as an update where you can extract the id from and send results for it

Contribute

Well, yes, we're just at the end. There are no more methods, yet. So again, please help me finish this library, since I don't have enough time to do it alone and make this the first and only Node.js library for Telegram bots (see https://core.telegram.org/bots/samples) :-)

Usage no npm install needed!