Python Telegram bot tutorial

In this tutorial you're going to learn how to use Python to make a telegram bot.

Requirements

For this tutorial you need a computer with Python 3.7 or higher installed. You can download it directly from the Python website.

Pay attention that on Windows the Python installer must be run as Administrator to correctly install pip into your PATH to simplify the next step.

Next you'll need to install the python-telegram-bot library that provides most of the Telegram bot functionality. If your environment is set up correctly you can do that by running the command:

pip install python-telegram-bot

Finally you'll need a programming environment. While you can use any text editor and terminal combination, In this tutorial I use Visual Studio Code. Once you have VSCode installed, click the Extensions menu or press CtrlShiftX and search for and install the Python extension by Microsoft.

Getting started

Next you're going to have to download this project's start point. Extract the ZIP somewhere on you computer.

Now open VSCode and select File » Open Folder and open the folder that you just extracted.

Ensure it runs

Open the file bot.py and press F5. If everything went well, you should see a message that says:

Exception has occurred: InvalidToken

That means the program starts correctly and you're ready to create your Telegram bot.