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

When the package is installed, it creates a symlink to our maker utility. You can thus grab our skeleton code like this:

$ ./mk scaffold

The main entry point for your server is named server.js so if your current package.json is using index.js you may want to change the line below (or rename the file, but if you do that don't forget to also change the now.json):

  "main": "server.js",

Additionally, you may want to have the following as well:

"scripts": {
    "start": "micro",
    "dev": "micro-dev",
    "debug": "node --inspect node_modules/.bin/micro-dev"
},

which will allow you to start your server locally (use npm run dev in development so use the micro-dev engine), and if you use Microsoft VS Code, you can create a debug configuration (in your .vscode/launch.json) like this, to allow debugging:

{
    "type": "node",
    "request": "launch",
    "name": "Launch via NPM",
    "runtimeExecutable": "npm",
    "runtimeArgs": [
        "run-script",
        "debug"
    ],
    "port": 9229,
    "envFile": "${workspaceFolder}/.env"
}

Finally, if for whatever reason the symlink to mk was not properly created, you can create it by hand like this:

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

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

Configure

Before deploying your bot you'll first need to edit your environment file .env with the needed information. The TELEGRAM_BOT_KEY is the value the 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:

$ npm install --save-dev micro-dev # in case you don't have it installed
$ 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 (as previously shown):

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

Deploy

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

Test

Before you can take your new bot for a spin, you need to get it started. Run this:

$ ./mk msg -b "/start"

Then go to Telegram, find the bot and start chatting! If you used our scaffolding you can greet the bot:

/hello

and it should greet you back

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