alexander

alexander is a simple yet effective way to create a Telegram inline Bot for audio files.

How to use alexander

Download the source code using the following command:

$ git clone https://github.com/davleone/alexander

Then install required dependencies:

$ pip install -r requirements.txt

Comments in config.yaml explain each setting and how editing them impacts the activity of the software. Feel free to edit the configuration file according to your needs.

Contact @BotFather to get your Bot token, enable inline queries and (optionally) enable inline feedback.

You can then run the software with the following command:

$ python main.py

In some cases (e.g. Linux cronjob) you might find useful to specify the absolute path of the config.yaml file in main.py; you can easily do so by modifying the corresponding strings.

How it works

By using this software you can operate a Telegram inline Bot that provides a list of audio files in response to an inline query. An example of an inline Telegram Bot (in this case, for GIFs) is @gif.

Any Telegram user can pass an inline query just typing "@username query" in any chat.

This software is able to:

• provide to any user a sorted list of relevant audio files for the query received;
• add/remove audio files, directly in the private chat with any admin;
• set/remove a description against which queries will be compared for any audio, directly in the private chat with any admin;
• keep track of the number of "views" each audio has received.

You can change the way a query is answered, add a custom caption to every audio, and many other things in the config.yaml file.

Contributing

This software was developed for my personal use, so if you have specific needs, radically different goals, etc. you should probably fork this repo.

You can help by:

• providing bug reports (with as much information as possible, such as your CONFIG.yaml and your log files);
• share your ideas on how to improve the software;
• updating and correcting the documentation;
• sending a pull request.

Versioning conventions

We follow a simple Major.Minor.Patch convention.

A major release is one that changes the config.yaml file. A minor release is one that adds new features to the software without changing the config.yaml file. A patch release is one that does nor adds new features nor changes the config.yaml file.