telegram-bot-ruby

Installation

Add following line to your Gemfile:

gem 'telegram-bot-ruby'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it system-wide:

$ gem install telegram-bot-ruby

Usage

First things first, you need to obtain a token for your bot. Then create your Telegram bot like this:

require 'telegram/bot'

token = 'YOUR_TELEGRAM_BOT_API_TOKEN'

Telegram::Bot::Client.run(token) do |bot|
  bot.listen do |message|
    case message.text
    when '/start'
      bot.api.send_message(chat_id: message.chat.id, text: "Hello, #{message.from.first_name}")
    when '/stop'
      bot.api.send_message(chat_id: message.chat.id, text: "Bye, #{message.from.first_name}")
    end
  end
end

Note that bot.api object implements Telegram Bot API methods as is. So you can invoke any method inside the block without any problems. All methods are available in both snake_case and camelCase notations.

Same thing about message object - it implements Message spec, so you always know what to expect from it.

Webhooks

If you are going to use webhooks instead of long polling, you need to implement your own webhook callbacks server. Take a look at this repo as an example.

Custom keyboards

You can use your own custom keyboards. Here is an example:

bot.listen do |message|
  case message.text
  when '/start'
    question = 'London is a capital of which country?'
    # See more: https://core.telegram.org/bots/api#replykeyboardmarkup
    answers =
      Telegram::Bot::Types::ReplyKeyboardMarkup
      .new(keyboard: [%w(A B), %w(C D)], one_time_keyboard: true)
    bot.api.send_message(chat_id: message.chat.id, text: question, reply_markup: answers)
  when '/stop'
    # See more: https://core.telegram.org/bots/api#replykeyboardhide
    kb = Telegram::Bot::Types::ReplyKeyboardHide.new(hide_keyboard: true)
    bot.api.send_message(chat_id: message.chat.id, text: 'Sorry to see you go :(', reply_markup: kb)
  end
end

Inline bots

If you are going to create inline bot, check the example below:

bot.listen do |message|
  case message
  when Telegram::Bot::Types::InlineQuery
    results = [
      Telegram::Bot::Types::InlineQueryResultArticle
        .new(id: 1, title: 'First article', message_text: 'Very interesting text goes here.'),
      Telegram::Bot::Types::InlineQueryResultArticle
        .new(id: 2, title: 'Second article', message_text: 'Another interesting text here.')
    ]
    bot.api.answer_inline_query(inline_query_id: message.id, results: results)
  when Telegram::Bot::Types::Message
    bot.api.send_message(chat_id: message.chat.id, text: "Hello, #{message.from.first_name}!")
  end
end

Now, with inline mode enabled, your message object can be an instance of Message, InlineQuery or ChosenInlineResult. That's why you need to check type of each message and decide how to handle it.

Using answer_inline_query you can send query results to user. results field must be an array of query result objects.

File upload

Your bot can even upload files (photos, audio, documents, stickers, video) to Telegram servers. Just like this:

bot.listen do |message|
  case message.text
  when '/photo'
    bot.api.send_photo(chat_id: message.chat.id, photo: File.new('~/Desktop/jennifer.jpg'))
  end
end

Logging

By default, bot doesn't log anything (uses NullLoger). You can change this behavior and provide your own logger class. See example below:

Telegram::Bot::Client.run(token, logger: Logger.new($stdout)) do |bot|
  bot.logger.info('Bot has been started')
  bot.listen do |message|
    # ...
  end
end

Botan.io support

Gem provides support of Botan.io analytics out of box. All you need is to obtain a token (follow the instructions from https://github.com/botanio/sdk). To track events you're interested in just call #track method. See example below:

require 'telegram/bot'
require 'telegram/bot/botan' # Botan.io extension isn't loaded by default, so make sure you required it.

token = 'YOUR_TELEGRAM_BOT_API_TOKEN'

Telegram::Bot::Client.run(token) do |bot|
  bot.enable_botan!('YOUR_BOTAN_TOKEN')
  bot.listen do |message|
    case message.text
    when '/start'
      bot.track('Started', message.from.id, type_of_chat: message.chat.class.name)
      # ...
    end
  end
end

#track method accepts 3 arguments:

name of event (required)
Telegram's user id (required)
hash of additional properties (optional)

Connection pool size

Sometimes you need to do some heavy work in another thread and send response from there. In this case you have to increase your connection pool size (by default it's 1). You can do it by setting env variable TELEGRAM_BOT_POOL_SIZE:

$ TELEGRAM_BOT_POOL_SIZE=4 ruby bot.rb

Boilerplates

If you don't know how to setup database for your bot or how to use it with different languages here are some boilerplates which can help you to start faster:

Ruby Telegram Bot boilerplate

Contributing

Fork it
Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
Create new Pull Request

alexkravets/telegram-bot-ruby