BOTLIB - Telegram C bot framework

Botlib is a small C framework for building Telegram bots. It provides a threaded event loop that delivers every matching update to your callback together with convenience helpers for SQLite, JSON, and dynamic strings.

Features

• Telegram Bot API helpers to send, edit, and download messages from a per-update worker thread.
• BotRequest parsing: split argv/argc, message type, mentions, file metadata (voice OGG), and targeting info.
• SQLite helpers and a ready-to-use key/value schema (TB_CREATE_KV_STORE) plus convenience wrappers like kvSet/kvGet.
• JSON selection with json_select (Parson) and SDS dynamic strings baked in.
• HTTP GET wrappers on top of libcurl.
• Minimal dependencies: libcurl, libsqlite3, pthread, and a C23-capable compiler.

Quick start

1. Install dependencies (Debian/Ubuntu): sudo apt install build-essential libcurl4-openssl-dev libsqlite3-dev just (or equivalent packages on your distro).
2. Drop your Telegram bot token in apikey.txt (one line), or pass it via --apikey <token> when running.
3. Edit mybot.c if you want to tweak triggers, responses, or database setup; the example already seeds the key/value store schema.
4. Build: just build (release-style) or just build-sanitize (ASan/UBSan/leak). If you prefer Zig, zig build produces zig-out/bin/mybot and accepts -Dsanitize=true.
5. Run the bot from the repo root: ./mybot --debug for verbose output, or add --dbfile <path> to pick a different SQLite location.
6. Add the bot to your chat/channel and promote it to administrator so it can read group messages; private chats work without admin rights.

The default database file is mybot.sqlite in the working directory.

Runtime options

• --apikey <token>: Telegram Bot API key (overrides apikey.txt).
• --dbfile <file>: Path to the SQLite database (default: ./mybot.sqlite).
• --debug: Increases debug level each time it is passed and implies verbose logging of Telegram responses.
• --verbose: Print basic request handling traces without full debug output.

API hints

• Entry point: startBot(create_sql, argc, argv, flags, handleRequest, cron, triggers);
• Your request handler receives sqlite3 *dbhandle and BotRequest *br; free the request with freeBotRequest() if you allocate your own.
• Respond with botSendMessage, botSendMessageAndGetInfo, or botEditMessageText; download voice messages with botGetFile.
• Use kvSet/kvGet/kvDel for the bundled key/value store or the sql* helpers for raw queries.
• json_select provides a simple formatted selector for navigating JSON replies.
• See mybot.c for a complete, runnable example of triggers, storage, and message editing.

Notes

• The SQLite and JSON helpers are derived from the Stonky project; check that codebase for deeper examples.
• Additional documentation for the Telegram helper surface is planned; the example bot exercises the core flows today.