TelegraML

An OCaml library for creating bots for Telegram Messenger. Bots are built using the official API provided by Telegram. The documentation can be viewed here.

Introduction:

Before creating a bot, it's recommended that you read through this page, which outlines some of the basic usage of bots and the process of registering and managing your bots.

The API is designed to make heavy use of OCaml's module system to provide a configurable template for creating new bots, with optional higher-level representations of features such as commands, chat events, or inline responses. All bots are created as modules, by instantiating the Telegram.Api.Mk functor, which will generate a module for using your bot directly. The direct commands can be accessed as members of the module, with the API's methods in snake_case with ~named arguments. However, when using the higher-level APIs (for the inline responses, chat events, or commands), it may be useful to reuse the same command generically across different bots. As a result, the commands/inline response functions are expected to return values of the Telegram.Api.Command.action. Using this type, the command is represented as an abstract data type. These commands are named in CamelCase, but they are equivalent to those directly accessible through the module. Note that the arguments are not named, so read the official documentation or the type signatures of the equivalent functions in order to understand what each argument represents.

If you need to get around the restrictions of using the action type to encode the responses, you can use the peek_update function to view the update before it's removed from the queue and process it manually. Note that the Telegram.Api.Command module provides convenience functions for helping you parse incoming commands manually if necessary.

Documentation:

Full OCamldoc-generated documentation is available here.

Getting Started:

Send "Hello, world" message

module MyBot = Telegram.Api.Mk (struct
  include Telegram.BotDefaults
  let token = [%blob "../bot.token"]
end);;

Lwt_main.run begin
  MyBot.send_message ~chat_id:(int_of_string [%blob "../chat.id"])
                     ~text:"Hello, world"
                     ~disable_notification:true
                     ~reply_to:None
                     ~reply_markup:None
end

Note that this example loads the files "chat.id" and "bot.token" from the surrounding directory to use as the chat_id and token.

Custom Message Parsing

By default, your bot will only respond to commands/callbacks. This will be fixed in the future as part of a rewrite of the library, but as of now you have to opt-in to a custom parser by watching updates by hand:

module MyBot = Telegram.Api.Mk(struct
  include Telegram.BotDefaults
  let token = (* blah blah blah *)
end)

(* Process the update and decide what to do with it/where to send it to *)
let process = function
  | Result.Success (Update.Message (id, message_info)) ->
    (* Do stuff with the message *)
  | _ -> return ()
  | Result.Failure e ->
    if e <> "Could not get head" then (* Don't spam when there's no updates *)
      Lwt_io.printl e
    else return ()

(* Repeatedly run the `process` function on each new update *)
let () =
  let rec loop () =
    MyBot.pop_update ~run_cmds:false () >>= process >>= loop in
  while true do (* Recover from errors if an exception is thrown *)
    try Lwt_main.run @@ loop ()
    with _ -> ()
  done

Demos, examples, and users:

hello world - Send "Hello, world" to a chat

example - Responds to /say_hi, tests getting user profile pictures

inline - Inline bot test

greet - Chat event test

glgbot - Some groupchat utilities: saved quotes, correcting messages, music jukebox, cute cat pics, and more

telegraml-dashboard - Tool for auto-generating web dashboards for your bots

telegram-rpg

If you're using TelegraML and you'd like your bot/extension/tutorial listed here, feel free to open a PR to list it here with a link and a short description.

API Status:

What works?

File uploading
Inline replies
Custom keyboards
All of the data types
Most of the methods (everything but set_webhook)

What doesn't?

No webhooks

Extra features:

Modular interface makes writing extensions simple (see telegraml-dashboard)
High-level interface for commands (Telegram.Api.BOT.commands : Telegram.Api.Command.command list)
- Tons of convenience functions for parsing commands, etc.
- Can exclude commands meant for other bots (Telegram.Api.BOT.command_postfix : string option)
- Admin-only command authorization (Telegram.Api.Command.with_auth : command:Telegram.Api.Command.command -> Telegram.Api.Command.action)
- Global command enabling/disabling
- Combinators for composing complex actions sequences (/>, etc.)
High-level chat event handling (Telegram.Api.BOT.new_chat_member : Telegram.Api.Chat.chat -> Telegram.Api.User.user -> Telegram.Api.Command.action, etc.)
High-level inline mode bindings (Telegram.Api.BOT.inline : Telegram.Api.InlineQuery.inline_query -> Telegram.Api.Command.action)
Default Telegram.Api.TELEGRAM_BOT.run : ?log:bool -> unit -> unit function for easy event loop setup
Asynchronous, Lwt-based I/O

Implemented Types:

Update
User
Chat
Message
MessageEntity
PhotoSize
Audio
Document
Sticker
Video
Voice
Contact
Location
Venue
UserProfilePhotos
File
ReplyKeyboardMarkup
KeyboardButton
ReplyKeyboardHide
InlineKeyboardMarkup
InlineKeyboardButton
CallbackQuery
ForceReply
ChatMember
InputFile
InlineQuery
InlineQueryResult
InlineQueryResultArticle
InlineQueryResultPhoto
InlineQueryResultGif
InlineQueryResultMpeg4Gif
InlineQueryResultVideo
InlineQueryResultAudio
InlineQueryResultVoice
InlineQueryResultDocument
InlineQueryResultLocation
InlineQueryResultVenue
InlineQueryResultContact
InlineQueryResultCachedPhoto
InlineQueryResultCachedGif
InlineQueryResultCachedMpeg4Gif
InlineQueryResultCachedSticker
InlineQueryResultCachedDocument
InlineQueryResultCachedVideo
InlineQueryResultCachedVoice
InlineQueryResultCachedAudio
InputMessageContent
InputTextMessageContent
InputLocationMessageContent
InputVenueMessageContent
InputContactMessageContent
ChosenInlineResult

Implemented methods:

getMe
sendMessage
forwardMessage
sendPhoto
sendAudio
sendDocument (uses only mime-type text/plain)
sendSticker
sendVideo
sendVoice
sendLocation
sendVenue
sendContact
getUserProfilePhotos
getFile
kickChatMember
leaveChat
unbanChatMember
getChat
getChatAdministrators
getChatMembersCount
getChatMember
sendChatAction
getUpdates
answerCallbackQuery
editMessageText
editMessageCaption
editMessageReplyMarkup
answerInlineQuery

nv-vn/TelegraML