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 in your project's root directory. 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

Deploy

Before you can deploy your project you'll need an account on the Now network -- see the link on the preface to this document for creating one.

Now account in hand, to deploy your project is super easy. Run:

$ ./mk

...which will synchronise the local files in your project with the Now servers and automatically bind the deployment to your Telegram bot's webhook

Your first deployment, however, won't have the information it needs to make the binding, namely the Bot key that Bot Father supplied you. You can provide provide this key to the mk command (with the --bot-key argument) but if you don't, it will prompt you for it. The information will be saved to your environment file (.env)

To see logs on your deployment:

$ ./mk logs

To see other commands supported by the make utility:

$ ./mk --help

Test

You should now be able to 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

Debug

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
$ 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"

Notes

Your project will likely need to store credentials and other sensitive information needed to access external systems. If that is the case, you can store this information in your environment file and deploy it to the Now network with the command below:

$ ./mk secrets

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