Telegram Bot Now

This project offers a skeleton for easily creating Telegram bots using the Now serverless platform. For more information on Now, see:

https://zeit.co/now

Install

The project is available from NPM and can be installed in the usual way:

$ npm install --save telegram-bot-now

But to deploy your bot you'll also need the Now client. Install it like this:

$ npm install -g now

Scaffolding

To get started create a local link to our maker utility:

ln -s node_modules/telegram-bot-now/mk

Then grab our skeleton bot code:

$ ./mk scaffold

Please note: the make utility will not work on Windows. Users of that operating system are encouraged to install Cygwin or another bash shell available

Deploy

To deploy your bot you'll first need to edit your environment file .env with the needed information. the TELEGRAM_BOT_KEY is the value Bot Father gives you for your bot, and the _URL will be your Now deployment alias. You'll need to create an account on Now first (the account name is included in the url) and the project name is the name of the directory where your project resides

Once you've entered in the right values run the command below:

$ ./mk secrets

which will upload the secrets to the Now environment. If you need to run your bot locally (for debugging), you can:

$ eval "$(./mk env)"
$ npm run dev

Your environment file is also compatible with the Microsoft VS Code debugger. Just make sure your ./.vscode/launch.json file contains the following line:

    "envFile": "${workspaceFolder}/.env"

Finally, you can create a Now deployment very simply:

$ ./mk

The above will synchronise the local files in your project with the Now servers and the bot will automatically bind the Telegram webhook to the TELEGRAM_BOT_URL deployment address in your environment file.

To see logs on the deployment:

$ ./mk logs

To see other commands supported by the make utility:

$ ./mk --help

Additional Reading

For a complete description of how to set up routes, create dialogues, the various utilities provided in the module, and troubleshooting guidance, please read the Medium article:

A Telegram bot in the serverless Now

Contribute

If there's some enhancement you'd like to contribute, please clone the project, modify it and submit a pull request:

$ git clone https://github.com/ekkis/telegram-bot-now.git

Support

Create a ticket on Github. Reach out to me on Telegram. You'll find me as @ekkis