Telegram bots

Create a Telegram Bot

Before you start developing your new bot, at first you need to register it in Telegram and receive its unique identifier. In Telegram, open the @BotFather profile and start to talk with “it”. Type the command “/newbot”. @BotFather will ask you for a bot name, which is a free text, and a bot username. The only restriction for a username is that it should always end by “bot”. If all is done correctly, the @BotFather would give your new bot an ID, which looks like 321196098:AAEDbOYD6iLWsHD7w28vqf3a9oBeJAPXXpg

The next step is to create a server-side script in your Scorocode application. The script will be associated with the bot to hande all data processing.

After that you need to create a new Scorocode bot. You can do it in the "Bots" page by pressing the "Create a new bot" button. This action will show you a form in witch you can specify bot's data:

Parameter	Properties	Description
Bot name	Mandatory	Application bot name
Bot identifier	Mandatory	Bot's Telegram ID , given by '@BotFather'
Script identifier	Mandatory	Choose script from the list of application server-side scripts
Bot activation flag	Optional, false by default	Set the flag to activate your bot

Press save button to save the new bot. At any time you can edit bot's settings by pressing the "edit" button.

Main principles

When your bot is activated, Scorocode creates the webhook to receive Telegram data. The data is available in your server-side script 'pool' object everytime it receives update from Telegram. See 'getting updates' documentation for a complete Update object description.

Bot's answers are transmitted with the .send(data) method and sc.Bot class, where data is an object with the following structure:

{
    'method': 'sendMessage',                            // Telegram Bot API method
    'method_params': {                                  // method parameters to be passed
      'chat_id': pool.message.chat.id.toString(),
      'text': 'Hello!',
      'reply_to_message_id': pool.message.message_id,
      'reply_markup': keyBoard
    },
  }

See Telegram Bot API documentation for a complete list of available methods and their parameters.

Supported methods

All Telegram Bot API v 2.3.1 methods are supported, except Telegram Bot Games API methods.

Bot server-side script example:

var sc = require('scorocode');

var client = sc.Init({
  ApplicationID: "xxx", // <- replace xxx with your appId key
  JavaScriptKey: "xxx", // <- replace xxx with your JavaScript key
  MasterKey: "xxx"      // <- replace xxx with your MasterKey key
});

var bot = new sc.Bot("321196098:AAEDbOYD6iLWsHD7w28vqf3a9oBeJAPXXpg");
var querystring = require('querystring');

// Crate a new button for ReplyKeyboardMarkup
function newKeyboardButton(text, request_contact, request_location) {
  var button = {
    'text': text
  }

  if (request_contact) {
    button.request_contact = request_contact
  }

  if (request_location) {
    button.request_location = request_location
  }

  return button
}

// Main logic

const sourceMessage = pool.message.text.toLowerCase()
var request = null

if (sourceMessage === '/start' || sourceMessage === 'Hi there') {

  var keyBoard = {
    'keyboard': [
      [ newKeyboardButton('Hi there') ],
      [ newKeyboardButton('my phone number', true)],
      [ newKeyboardButton('logo') ]
    ]
  }

  request = {
    'method': 'sendMessage',
    'method_params': {
      'chat_id': pool.message.chat.id.toString(),
      'text': 'Hello!',
      'reply_to_message_id': pool.message.message_id,
      'reply_markup': keyBoard
    },
  }

} else if (sourceMessage === 'logo') {

  request = {
    'method': 'sendPhoto',
    'method_params': {
      'chat_id': pool.message.chat.id.toString(),
      'photo': 'https://habrastorage.org/files/aab/c24/364/aabc24364c3b4e109c20ae71da646d91.jpg',
    },
  }

} else {
  return
}

bot.send(request);