python-telegram-bot VS telegram-bot-api

To run the bot, you will first need to install python-telegram-bot library:

We've just gone through some basic examples but I hope you're convinced that creating your own Telegram bot is no tough work! From here on out, you may be interested to check out the documentation for python-telegram-bot to find out more of what you can do with the bot.

We are going to use this https://github.com/python-telegram-bot/python-telegram-bot package that will help us to create the telegram bot. Make sure to install it with

Nearly all py examples I see (eg examples within this popular package) use polling which I guess would be a separate server to the main Django server (as its a script thats continually running to listen). There's this older package with webhooks but it no longer works.

I've just tried to develop my first bot. There are a few libraries for this. I used this one - https://github.com/python-telegram-bot/python-telegram-bot. There is good documentation here with example code https://github.com/python-telegram-bot/python-telegram-bot/wiki/Extensions-–-Your-first-Bot. Also I used official documentation (which is more detailed): https://core.telegram.org/bots/features

First, create a bot by talking to the BotFather and follow the instructions to set it up. You can learn more about creating a bot by reading the official Telegram Bot documentation: https://core.telegram.org/bots#creating-a-new-bot Next, you will need to generate OTPs. One way to do this is by using a library like pyotp (https://pypi.org/project/pyotp/). This library allows you to generate OTPs using the HOTP (HMAC-Based One-Time Password) or TOTP (Time-Based One-Time Password) algorithms. Once you have your OTPs being generated, you can send them to your users via your bot. You can do this by using the bot's send_message method, which is part of the Python Telegram Bot library (https://python-telegram-bot.org/). Finally, you will need to handle user input and verify the OTPs that are sent to your bot. You can do this by handling the message event, which is triggered every time a user sends a message to your bot. In your event handler, you can check the received OTP against the expected OTP (which you can generate using the same library that you used to generate the initial OTP). If the OTPs match, you can consider the authentication to be successful.

Is not that hard, they have amazing documentation about it: https://core.telegram.org/bots

You can make authorization via Telegram another way. It works. But today we want to do the classic OAuth Authorization. Before you begin, you need to create a Telegram bot and obtain your bot token. You can do this in @BotFather in Telegram. For more information on initiating a bot, read the Telegram Bot API documentation: https://core.telegram.org/bots

Absolutely possible. Here's the github page to the Telegram bot API. You would just need to check for incoming messages, check the body of the message for a word or phrase, and then send a message back with a photo or gif and an encouraging message.

Creating a Telegram bot is fun: there's no website, no sign up, no forms — you just use a... bot. Yes, a bot that creates bots. It's called the BotFather 😂

Telegram has a bot API server that provides API to control the bots and get updates. Their own instance has some restrictions like you cannot download files bigger than 20MB. So, using a self hosted bot API server, you can overcome those limits.

General Bot Platform Overview

$ curl -4 -v https://api.telegram.org * Trying 149.154.167.220:443... * TCP_NODELAY set * Connected to api.telegram.org (149.154.167.220) port 443 (#0) * ALPN, offering h2 * ALPN, offering http/1.1 * successfully set certificate verify locations: * CAfile: /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt CApath: /etc/ssl/certs * TLSv1.3 (OUT), TLS handshake, Client hello (1): * TLSv1.3 (IN), TLS handshake, Server hello (2): * TLSv1.3 (IN), TLS handshake, Encrypted Extensions (8): * TLSv1.3 (IN), TLS handshake, Certificate (11): * TLSv1.3 (IN), TLS handshake, CERT verify (15): * TLSv1.3 (IN), TLS handshake, Finished (20): * TLSv1.3 (OUT), TLS change cipher, Change cipher spec (1): * TLSv1.3 (OUT), TLS handshake, Finished (20): * SSL connection using TLSv1.3 / TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 * ALPN, server accepted to use h2 * Server certificate: * subject: CN=api.telegram.org * start date: Mar 24 15:21:45 2022 GMT * expire date: Apr 25 15:21:45 2023 GMT * subjectAltName: host "api.telegram.org" matched cert's "api.telegram.org" * issuer: C=US; ST=Arizona; L=Scottsdale; O=GoDaddy.com, Inc.; OU=http://certs.godaddy.com/repository/; CN=Go Daddy Secure Certificate Authority - G2 * SSL certificate verify ok. * Using HTTP2, server supports multi-use * Connection state changed (HTTP/2 confirmed) * Copying HTTP/2 data in stream buffer to connection buffer after upgrade: len=0 * Using Stream ID: 1 (easy handle 0x555fdb2de2f0) > GET / HTTP/2 > Host: api.telegram.org > user-agent: curl/7.68.0 > accept: */* > * TLSv1.3 (IN), TLS handshake, Newsession Ticket (4): * TLSv1.3 (IN), TLS handshake, Newsession Ticket (4): * old SSL session ID is stale, removing * Connection state changed (MAX_CONCURRENT_STREAMS == 128)! < HTTP/2 302 < server: nginx/1.18.0 < date: Tue, 18 Oct 2022 00:00:24 GMT < content-type: text/html < content-length: 145 < location: https://core.telegram.org/bots < strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload < access-control-allow-origin: * < access-control-allow-methods: GET, POST, OPTIONS < access-control-expose-headers: Content-Length,Content-Type,Date,Server,Connection < 302 Found 302 Found nginx/1.18.0 * Connection #0 to host api.telegram.org left intact

It's done via bots, which let you add clickable options to posts. Here's an FAQ on bots: https://core.telegram.org/bots