This package provides a pure R interface for the Telegram Bot API. In addition to the pure API implementation, it features a number of tools to make the development of Telegram bots with R easy and straightforward, providing an easy-to-use interface that takes some work off the programmer.
You can install telegram.bot from CRAN:
install.packages(“telegram.bot”) Or the development version from GitHub:
devtools::install_github(“ebeneditos/telegram.bot”) Usage You can quickly build a chatbot with a few lines:
library(telegram.bot)
start <- function(bot, update) { bot\(sendMessage( chat_id = update\)message\(chat\)id, text = sprintf(“Hello %s!”, update\(message\)from$first_name) ) }
updater <- Updater(“TOKEN”) + CommandHandler(“start”, start)
updater$start_polling() # Send “/start” to the bot If you don’t have a TOKEN, you can follow the steps explained below to generate one.
One of the core instances from the package is Bot, which represents a Telegram Bot. You can find a full list of the Telegram API methods implemented in its documentation (?Bot), but here there are some examples:
bot <- Bot(token = “TOKEN”)
print(bot$getMe())
updates <- bot$getUpdates()
Note: you should text the bot before calling getUpdates chat_id <- updates[[1L]]$from_chat_id()
Send message bot$sendMessage(chat_id, text = “foo bold italic”, parse_mode = “Markdown” )
Send photo bot$sendPhoto(chat_id, photo = “https://telegram.org/img/t_logo.png” )
Send audio bot$sendAudio(chat_id, audio = “http://www.largesound.com/ashborytour/sound/brobob.mp3” )
Send document bot\(sendDocument(chat_id, document = "https://github.com/ebeneditos/telegram.bot/raw/gh-pages/docs/telegram.bot.pdf" ) Send sticker bot\)sendSticker(chat_id, sticker = “https://www.gstatic.com/webp/gallery/1.webp” )
Send video bot$sendVideo(chat_id, video = “http://techslides.com/demos/sample-videos/small.mp4” )
Send gif bot$sendAnimation(chat_id, animation = “https://media.giphy.com/media/sIIhZliB2McAo/giphy.gif” )
Send location bot$sendLocation(chat_id, latitude = 51.521727, longitude = -0.117255 )
bot$sendChatAction(chat_id, action = “typing” )
photos <- bot$getUserProfilePhotos(user_id = chat_id)
file_id <- photos\(photos[[1L]][[1L]]\)file_id bot\(getFile(file_id, destfile = "photo.jpg") Note that you can also send local files by passing their path instead of an URL. Additionally, all methods accept their equivalent snake_case syntax (e.g. bot\)get_me() is equivalent to bot$getMe()).
To make it work, you’ll need an access TOKEN (it should look something like 123456:ABC-DEF1234ghIkl-zyx57W2v1u123ew11). If you don’t have it, you have to talk to @BotFather and follow a few simple steps (described here).
Recommendation: Following Hadley’s API guidelines it’s unsafe to type the TOKEN just in the R script. It’s better to use environment variables set in .Renviron file.
So let’s say you have named your bot RTelegramBot; you can open the .Renviron file with the R command:
file.edit(path.expand(file.path(“~”, “.Renviron”))) And put the following line with your TOKEN in your .Renviron:
If you follow the suggested R_TELEGRAM_BOT_ prefix convention you’ll be able to use the bot_token function (otherwise you’ll have to get these variable from Sys.getenv). Finally, restart R and you can then create the Updater object as:
updater <- Updater(token = bot_token(“RTelegramBot”)) Getting Started To get you started with telegram.bot, we recommend to take a look at its Wiki:
