telegram-bot-ruby

🚧 Upgrading to 1.0

Since v1.0 telegram-bot-ruby uses dry-struct instead of virtus. This means that type objects are now immutable and you can't change them after initialization:

# This won't work
kb = Telegram::Bot::Types::ReplyKeyboardRemove.new
kb.remove_keyboard = true

# You have to set attributes in constructor instead
kb = Telegram::Bot::Types::ReplyKeyboardRemove.new(remove_keyboard: true)

Please make sure it doesn't break your existing code before upgrading to 1.0.

Installation

Add following line to your Gemfile:

gem 'telegram-bot-ruby', '~> 1.0'

And then execute:

bundle

Or install it system-wide:

gem install telegram-bot-ruby

Usage

First things first, you need to obtain a token for your bot. Then create your Telegram bot like this:

require 'telegram/bot'

token = 'YOUR_TELEGRAM_BOT_API_TOKEN'

Telegram::Bot::Client.run(token) do |bot|
  bot.listen do |message|
    case message.text
    when '/start'
      bot.api.send_message(chat_id: message.chat.id, text: "Hello, #{message.from.first_name}")
    when '/stop'
      bot.api.send_message(chat_id: message.chat.id, text: "Bye, #{message.from.first_name}")
    end
  end
end

Note that bot.api object implements Telegram Bot API methods as is. So you can invoke any method inside the block without any problems. All methods are available in both snake_case and camelCase notations.

If you need to start a bot in development mode you have to pass environment: :test:

Telegram::Bot::Client.run(token, environment: :test) do |bot|
  # ...
end

Same thing about message object: it implements Message spec, so you always know what to expect from it.

To gracefully stop the bot, for example by INT signal (Ctrl-C), call the bot.stop method:

bot = Telegram::Bot::Client.new(token)

Signal.trap('INT') do
  bot.stop
end

bot.listen do |message|
  # it will be in an infinity loop until `bot.stop` command
  # (with a small delay for the current `fetch_updates` request)
end

Webhooks

If you are going to use webhooks instead of long polling, you need to implement your own webhook callbacks server. Take a look at this repo as an example.

Proxy

As some countries block access to Telegram, you can set up your own proxy and use it to access Telegram API. In this case you need to configure API URL:

Telegram::Bot::Client.run(token, url: 'https://proxy.example.com') do |bot|
  # ...
end

Custom keyboards

You can use your own custom keyboards. Here is an example:

bot.listen do |message|
  case message.text
  when '/start'
    question = 'London is a capital of which country?'
    # See more: https://core.telegram.org/bots/api#replykeyboardmarkup
    answers =
        Telegram::Bot::Types::ReplyKeyboardMarkup.new(
          keyboard: [
            [{ text: 'A' }, { text: 'B' }],
            [{ text: 'C' }, { text: 'D' }]
          ],
          one_time_keyboard: true
        )
    bot.api.send_message(chat_id: message.chat.id, text: question, reply_markup: answers)
  when '/stop'
    # See more: https://core.telegram.org/bots/api#replykeyboardremove
    kb = Telegram::Bot::Types::ReplyKeyboardRemove.new(remove_keyboard: true)
    bot.api.send_message(chat_id: message.chat.id, text: 'Sorry to see you go :(', reply_markup: kb)
  end
end

Furthermore, you can ask user to share location or phone number using KeyboardButton:

bot.listen do |message|
  kb = [[
    Telegram::Bot::Types::KeyboardButton.new(text: 'Give me your phone number', request_contact: true),
    Telegram::Bot::Types::KeyboardButton.new(text: 'Show me your location', request_location: true)
  ]]
  markup = Telegram::Bot::Types::ReplyKeyboardMarkup.new(keyboard: kb)
  bot.api.send_message(chat_id: message.chat.id, text: 'Hey!', reply_markup: markup)
end

Inline keyboards

Bot API 2.0 brought us new inline keyboards. Example:

bot.listen do |message|
  case message
  when Telegram::Bot::Types::CallbackQuery
    # Here you can handle your callbacks from inline buttons
    if message.data == 'touch'
      bot.api.send_message(chat_id: message.from.id, text: "Don't touch me!")
    end
  when Telegram::Bot::Types::Message
    kb = [[
      Telegram::Bot::Types::InlineKeyboardButton.new(text: 'Go to Google', url: 'https://google.com'),
      Telegram::Bot::Types::InlineKeyboardButton.new(text: 'Touch me', callback_data: 'touch'),
      Telegram::Bot::Types::InlineKeyboardButton.new(text: 'Switch to inline', switch_inline_query: 'some text')
    ]]
    markup = Telegram::Bot::Types::InlineKeyboardMarkup.new(inline_keyboard: kb)
    bot.api.send_message(chat_id: message.chat.id, text: 'Make a choice', reply_markup: markup)
  end
end

Inline bots

If you are going to create inline bot, check the example below:

bot.listen do |message|
  case message
  when Telegram::Bot::Types::InlineQuery
    results = [
      ['1', 'First article', 'Very interesting text goes here.'],
      ['2', 'Second article', 'Another interesting text here.']
    ].map do |arr|
      Telegram::Bot::Types::InlineQueryResultArticle.new(
        id: arr[0],
        title: arr[1],
        input_message_content: Telegram::Bot::Types::InputTextMessageContent.new(message_text: arr[2])
      )
    end

    bot.api.answer_inline_query(inline_query_id: message.id, results: results)
  when Telegram::Bot::Types::Message
    bot.api.send_message(chat_id: message.chat.id, text: "Hello, #{message.from.first_name}!")
  end
end

Now, with inline mode enabled, your message object can be an instance of Message, InlineQuery or ChosenInlineResult. That's why you need to check type of each message and decide how to handle it.

Using answer_inline_query you can send query results to user. results field must be an array of query result objects.

File upload

Your bot can even upload files (photos, audio, documents, stickers, video) to Telegram servers. Just like this:

bot.listen do |message|
  case message.text
  when '/photo'
    path_to_photo = File.expand_path('~/Desktop/jennifer.jpg')
    bot.api.send_photo(chat_id: message.chat.id, photo: Faraday::UploadIO.new(path_to_photo, 'image/jpeg'))
  end
end

Logging

By default, bot doesn't log anything (uses NullLoger). You can change this behavior and provide your own logger class. See example below:

Telegram::Bot::Client.run(token, logger: Logger.new($stderr)) do |bot|
  bot.logger.info('Bot has been started')
  bot.listen do |message|
    # ...
  end
end

Connection adapters

Since version 0.5.0 we rely on faraday under the hood. You can use any of supported adapters (for example, net/http/persistent):

require 'net/http/persistent'

Telegram::Bot.configure do |config|
  config.adapter = :net_http_persistent
end

Boilerplates

If you don't know how to setup database for your bot or how to use it with different languages here are some boilerplates which can help you to start faster:

Ruby Telegram Bot boilerplate

Contributing

Fork it.
Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature).
Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature').
Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature).
Create a new Pull Request.