node-telegram-bot-starter-kit

How to set up a Telegram Bot using Node.js and node-telegram-bot-api

Instructions

Choose your hosting

I will use www.openshift.com because it offers a free plan.
Sign in and click on “Add Application” or “Create your first application now”
Select NodeJs 0.10 cartridge
Choose your public url and the region then click “Create Application” (this may take a few seconds)
In the next step click “Yes, help me get started” and insert your public SSH key. If you already have a key it can be found in “c:\Users\YOUR_USERNAME\.ssh\id_rsa.pub” if you are on windows, otherwise in “~/.ssh/id_rsa”
Press “Save”

Set up your repo and install node-telegram-bot-api

Clone the repository using the provided url
Enter the nodejs folder
Run from the terminal npm install -S node-telegram-bot-api
Open the file server.js and substitute the code with the example provided by https://github.com/yagop/node-telegram-bot-api

var TelegramBot = require('node-telegram-bot-api');

var token = 'YOUR_TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN';
// Setup polling way
var bot = new TelegramBot(token, {polling: true});

// Matches /echo [whatever]
bot.onText(/\/echo (.+)/, function (msg, match) {
  var fromId = msg.from.id;
  var resp = match[1];
  bot.sendMessage(fromId, resp);
});

// Any kind of message
bot.on('message', function (msg) {
  var chatId = msg.chat.id;
  // photo can be: a file path, a stream or a Telegram file_id
  var photo = 'cats.png';
  bot.sendPhoto(chatId, photo, {caption: 'Lovely kittens'});
});

Get your token

Open Telegram and search for BotFather (https://telegram.me/botfather)

Write /newbot
Write the name of your bot
Write the username of your bot
Copy your token and substitute it to “YOUR_TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN” in the file server.js

Deploy

git add --all
git commit -am ”initial commit”
git push origin master This may take few seconds

Note: ignore failure messages. These errors are reported because our app is not listening to any port, but we don’t need to.

Enjoy

Open your bot on Telegram and write /echo “write-something” and it should reply with the same message you wrote

Inspired by: https://github.com/yukuku/telebot