pyTelegramBotAPI -
A simple, but extensible Python implementation for the [Telegram Bot API](https://core.telegram.org/bots/api). -
[](https://travis-ci.org/eternnoir/pyTelegramBotAPI) * [Getting started.](#getting-started) * [Writing your first bot](#writing-your-first-bot) @@ -24,6 +24,8 @@ * [The listener mechanism](#the-listener-mechanism) * [Using web hooks](#using-web-hooks) * [Logging](#logging) + * [F.A.Q.](#faq) + * [How can I distinguish a User and a GroupChat in message.chat?](#how-can-i-distinguish-a-user-and-a-groupchat-in-messagechat) * [The Telegram Chat Group](#the-telegram-chat-group) * [More examples](#more-examples) @@ -32,7 +34,7 @@ This API is tested with Python 2.6, Python 2.7, Python 3.4, Pypy and Pypy 3. There are two ways to install the library: -* Installation using pip (a Python package manager): +* Installation using pip (a Python package manager)*: ``` $ pip install pyTelegramBotAPI @@ -47,6 +49,8 @@ $ python setup.py install It is generally recommended to use the first option. +**While the API is production-ready, it is still under development and it has regular updates, do not forget to update it regularly by calling `pip install pytelegrambotapi --upgrade`* + ## Writing your first bot ### Prerequisites @@ -65,7 +69,7 @@ import telebot bot = TeleBot("TOKEN") ``` -*Note: Make sure to actually replace TOKEN with our own API token.* +*Note: Make sure to actually replace TOKEN with your own API token.* After that declaration, we need to register some so-called message handlers. Message handlers define filters which a message must pass. If a message passes the filter, the decorated function is called and the incoming message is passed as an argument. @@ -85,6 +89,8 @@ def echo_all(message): ``` This one echoes all incoming text messages back to the sender. +*Note: all handlers are tested in the order in which they were declared* + We now have a basic bot which replies a static message to "/start" and "/help" commands and echoes the rest of the sent messages back. To start the bot, add the following to our source file: ```python bot.polling() @@ -293,6 +299,8 @@ The TeleBot constructor takes the following optional arguments: TeleBot's `polling()` function takes an optional none_stop argument. When none_stop equals True, the bot will not exit when it receives an invalid response from the Telegram API servers. none_stop defaults to False. Example: `tb.polling(none_stop=True)` +*Note: You should take caution when using this, because some errors (e.g. if the Telegram servers fail to return data) can not be ignored and the bot would malfunction.* + ### The listener mechanism As an alternative to the message handlers, one can also register a function as a listener to TeleBot. Example: ```python @@ -323,11 +331,31 @@ logger.setLevel(logging.DEBUG) # or use logging.INFO ch.setFormatter(formatter) ``` +## F.A.Q. + +### How can I distinguish a User and a GroupChat in message.chat? +There are two ways to do this: + + - Checking the instance of message.chat with `isinstance`: +```python +def is_user(chat): + return isinstance(chat, types.User) + +print is_user(message.chat) # True or False +``` + - Checking whether the chat id is negative or positive. If the chat id is negative, the chat is a GroupChat, if it is positive, it is a User. Example: +```python +def is_user(chat): + return chat.id > 0 + +print is_user(message.chat) # True or False +``` + ## The Telegram Chat Group Get help. Discuss. Chat. -Join [pyTelegramBotAPI Chat Group](https://telegram.me/joinchat/067e22c60035523fda8f6025ee87e30b). +Join the [pyTelegramBotAPI Telegram Chat Group](https://telegram.me/joinchat/067e22c60035523fda8f6025ee87e30b). ## More examples