telegramBot-python

How to create a Telegram Bot with Python. In this guide, I'll create a bot that gives it back a random quote from two json files. The user can use only the following commands:

• /start: to run the bot
• /friends: to get a random Friends quote
• /himym: to get a random How I met your mother quote
• /github: to print the link to this guide

The bot created is @SitComBot. In the last bot's version, I've added two buttons for the two sitcoms.

Prerequisites

To create this simple bot, it's recommended to know the Python fundamentals.

How does it work

When the user wants to receive a quote, the bot will choose it randomly from friends.json and himym.json. For sending messages, we'll use the Python library telepot.

Getting started

First of all, you need to install Python and a text editor to code your bot. I suggest you to use Sublime Text because it's my favourite one due to its minimalism, but every text editor/IDE is fine. For this guide, I'll use a text editor and the command prompt to run the script.

Then, you must have a Telegram account and then get the token to access the Telegram bot, using @BotFather.

Save the token because you'll need it later.

We must install some Python modules throught the Command Prompt:

1. Open Command Prompt (Select Start button, type "cmd", select Command Prompt from the list).
2. Check if you have correctly installed Python, typing python --version. If you see your version, you can pass to the next step, otherwise you need to add Python to your Windows PATH (guide).
3. Type sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade to download updated version of packages from Python location.
4. Type sudo apt install python3-pip to install pip that is necessary for the next step to install the modules.
5. Install the following modules: telepot, requests, os, time, pprint, sys. Install them typing in the Command Prompt pip install <NAME_MODULE> (for example pip install telepot).

Let's code

Open the text editor/IDE and create a new project, saving it in the same folder where there are the two json files, with the extension .py, for example sitcomquotes_bot.py. Now we're ready. First of all, we need to import all of modules we are going to use.

import sys, telepot, json, time, requests, os, random
from telepot.loop import MessageLoop

After that, let's define our handle function, to handle messages sent by users. The following code lines are to extract “headline” info about the message sent by users.

def handle(msg):
    content_type, chat_type, chat_id = telepot.glance(msg)
    

The first thing texted from a user is /start, so we need to define what our bot does in this situation: it sends a welcome message .

if text == '/start':
            bot.sendMessage(chat_id, "Hi! Choose the sitcom to get the random quote.")

Now the user can choose with the three following commands. /friends and /himym call the RandomQuote function that we are going to define.

elif text == '/friends':
            ** call the function to get the random quote **
            RandomQuote("Friends", chat_id)
elif text == '/himym':
            ** call the function to get the random quote **
            RandomQuote("Himym", chat_id)
elif text == '/github':
            bot.sendMessage(chat_id, "To know how this bot works: https://github.com/fillics/telegrambot-python")

Let's define the function RandomQuote that reads from the json files and sends a message that contains a random quote and the character.

def RandomQuote(sitcom, chat_id):
	if sitcom == "Friends":
		num = random.randint(0,19)
		bot.sendMessage(chat_id, dataFriends[num]['quote'] + "\n" + "*" +
			dataFriends[num]['character'] + "*", parse_mode= 'Markdown')

	if sitcom == "Himym":
		num = random.randint(0,42)
		bot.sendMessage(chat_id, dataHimym[num]['quote'] + "\n" + "*" +
			dataHimym[num]['character'] + "*", parse_mode= 'Markdown')

We are almost done. To start the bot and keep running it, we need to add the following lines and substitute INSERT_YOUR_TOKEN with the token obtained when we created the bot throught BotFather.

TOKEN = 'INSERT_YOUR_TOKEN'
bot = telepot.Bot(TOKEN)
MessageLoop(bot, handle).run_as_thread()
while 1:
  time.sleep(10)

To run the bot, go to the Command Prompt and using the command cd, moving into the folder where you saved your telegramBot.py and the two json files. After that, type python sitcomquotes_bot.py. If the terminal prints "Listening", the bot works!