TGO • Go Telegram Bot API

TGO is Telegram Bot API library for Golang with full API implementation (one-to-one)

The goal of this library was to create API with same types and methods as actual telegram bot API. Every type and method have been represented in types.go and methods.go files with mostly all documentation from telegram.

For more documentation, see docs at tgo.ml.

Note: TGO uses fasthttp instead of net/http and go-json instead of encoding/json.

📋 Table Of Content

Click to show • hide

• ⚡ Getting Started
  • 🧩 Basic setup
  • 📩 Getting updates
  • 🪁 Using Telegram methods
  • 🧼 Utility methods
  • 🦾 Helper With... methods
  • 🌥️ Bot handlers
• 🎨 Contribution
• 🔐 License

⚡ Getting Started

How to get the library:

go get -u github.com/dsurl/tgo

Make sure you get the latest version to have all new features & fixes.

More examples can be seen here:

Click to show • hide

• Basic
• Configuration
• Methods
• Updates (long pulling)
• Updates (webhook)
• Echo bot
• Echo bot (with handlers)
• Sending files (documents, photos, media groups)
• Inline keyboard
• Keyboard
• Utility methods
• Inline query bot
• Bot handlers
• Graceful shutdown
• Custom predicates for handlers
• Handler ordering
• Specific handlers
• Predicate as middleware
• Update processor
• Message entities
• Empty values

Note: Error handling may be missing in examples, but I strongly recommend handling all errors.

🧩 Basic setup

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For start, you need to create instance of your bot and specify token.

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"os"

	"github.com/dsurl/tgo"
)

func main() {
	// Get Bot token from environment variables
	botToken := os.Getenv("TOKEN")

	// Create bot and enable debugging info
	// Note: Please keep in mind that default logger may expose sensitive information,
	// use in development only
	// (more on configuration at examples/configuration/main.go)
	bot, err := tgo.NewBot(botToken, tgo.WithDefaultDebugLogger())
	if err != nil {
		fmt.Println(err)
		os.Exit(1)
	}

	// Call method getMe (https://core.telegram.org/bots/api#getme)
	botUser, err := bot.GetMe()
	if err != nil {
		fmt.Println("Error:", err)
	}

	// Print Bot information
	fmt.Printf("Bot user: %+v\n", botUser)
}

📩 Getting updates

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In order to receive updates you can use two methods:

• using long polling (bot.UpdatesViaLongPulling)
• using webhook (bot.UpdatesViaWebhook)

Let's start from long pulling (easier for local testing):

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"os"

	"github.com/dsurl/tgo"
)

func main() {
	botToken := os.Getenv("TOKEN")

	// Note: Please keep in mind that default logger may expose sensitive information,
	// use in development only
	bot, err := tgo.NewBot(botToken, tgo.WithDefaultDebugLogger())
	if err != nil {
		fmt.Println(err)
		os.Exit(1)
	}

	// Get updates channel
	// (more on configuration at examples/updates_long_pulling/main.go)
	updates, _ := bot.UpdatesViaLongPulling(nil)

	// Stop reviving updates from updates channel
	defer bot.StopLongPulling()

	// Loop through all updates when they came
	for update := range updates {
		fmt.Printf("Update: %+v\n", update)
	}
}

Webhook example (recommended way):

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"os"

	"github.com/dsurl/tgo"
)

func main() {
	botToken := os.Getenv("TOKEN")

	// Note: Please keep in mind that default logger may expose sensitive information,
	// use in development only
	bot, err := tgo.NewBot(botToken, tgo.WithDefaultDebugLogger())
	if err != nil {
		fmt.Println(err)
		os.Exit(1)
	}

	// Set up a webhook on Telegram side
	_ = bot.SetWebhook(&tgo.SetWebhookParams{
		URL: "https://example.com/bot" + bot.Token(),
	})

	// Receive information about webhook
	info, _ := bot.GetWebhookInfo()
	fmt.Printf("Webhook Info: %+v\n", info)

	// Get updates channel from webhook.
	// Note: For one bot only one webhook allowed.
	// (more on configuration at examples/updates_webhook/main.go)
	updates, _ := bot.UpdatesViaWebhook("/bot" + bot.Token())

	// Start server for receiving requests from Telegram
	_ = bot.StartListeningForWebhook("localhost:443")

	// Stop reviving updates from updates channel and shutdown webhook server
	defer func() {
		_ = bot.StopWebhook()
	}()

	// Loop through all updates when they came
	for update := range updates {
		fmt.Printf("Update: %+v\n", update)
	}
}

Note: You may wish to use Let's Encrypt in order to generate your free TLS certificate.

🪁 Using Telegram methods

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All Telegram Bot API methods described in documentation can be used by the library. They have same names and same parameters, parameters represented by struct with name: <methodName> + Params. If method don't have required parameters nil value can be used as a parameter.

Note: types.go and methods.go was automatically generated from documentation, and it's possible that they have errors or missing parts both in comments and actual code. Feel free to report such things.

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"os"

	"github.com/dsurl/tgo"
	tu "github.com/dsurl/tgo/utils"
)

func main() {
	botToken := os.Getenv("TOKEN")

	// Note: Please keep in mind that default logger may expose sensitive information,
	// use in development only
	bot, err := tgo.NewBot(botToken, tgo.WithDefaultDebugLogger())
	if err != nil {
		fmt.Println(err)
		os.Exit(1)
	}

	// Call method getMe
	botUser, _ := bot.GetMe()
	fmt.Printf("Bot User: %+v\n", botUser)

	updates, _ := bot.UpdatesViaLongPulling(nil)
	defer bot.StopLongPulling()

	for update := range updates {
		if update.Message != nil {
			// Retrieve chat ID
			chatID := update.Message.Chat.ID

			// Call method sendMessage.
			// Sends message to sender with same text (echo bot).
			// (https://core.telegram.org/bots/api#sendmessage)
			sentMessage, _ := bot.SendMessage(
				tu.Message(
					tu.ID(chatID),
					update.Message.Text,
				),
			)

			fmt.Printf("Sent Message: %v\n", sentMessage)
		}
	}
}

🧼 Utility methods

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In TGO even though you have all types and methods available, it's often not so convenient to use them directly. To solve this issues utils package was created. It contains utility-helper function that will make your life a bit easier.

I suggest including it with alias to get cleaner code:

import tu "github.com/dsurl/tgo/utils"

Package contains couple methods for creating send parameters with all required parameters like:

• Message(chatID, text) => SendMessageParams
• Photo(chatID, photoFile) => SendPhotoParams
• Location(chatID, latitude, longitude) => SendLocationParams
• ...

Or other useful methods like:

• ID(intID) => ChatID
• File(namedReader) => InputFile
• ...

Utils related to methods can be found in utils/methods, for types in utils/types, for handlers in utils/handler, for api in utils/api.

Note: If you think that something can be added to utils package fill free to create an issue or pull request with desired changes.

🦾 Helper With... methods

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Creating method parameters is sometimes bulky and not convenient, so you can use with methods in combination with utility methods.

Here is a simple example of creating a message with a keyboard that has 4 buttons with different parameters.

package main

import (
	"github.com/dsurl/tgo"
	tu "github.com/dsurl/tgo/utils"
)

func main() {
	// ... initializing bot (full example in examples/keyboard/main.go)

	// Creating keyboard
	keyboard := tu.Keyboard(
		tu.KeyboardRow( // Row 1
			// Column 1
			tu.KeyboardButton("Button"),

			// Column 2, `with` method
			tu.KeyboardButton("Poll Regular").
				WithRequestPoll(tu.PollTypeRegular()),
		),
		tu.KeyboardRow( // Row 2
			// Column 1, `with` method 
			tu.KeyboardButton("Contact").WithRequestContact(),

			// Column 2, `with` method 
			tu.KeyboardButton("Location").WithRequestLocation(),
		),
	).WithResizeKeyboard().WithInputFieldPlaceholder("Select something")
	// Multiple `with` methods can be chained

	// Creating message
	msg := tu.Message(
		tu.ID(123),
		"Hello World",
	).WithReplyMarkup(keyboard).WithProtectContent() // Multiple `with` method 

	bot.SendMessage(msg)
}

Those methods allow you to modify values without directly accessing them, also as you saw with methods can be staked one to another in order to update multiple values.

🌥️ Bot handlers

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Processing updates just in for loop is not the most pleasing thing to do, so TGO provides net/http like handlers, but instead of the path, you provide predicates.

One update will only match to the first handler whose predicates are satisfied, predicates checked in order of handler registration (it's useful to first specify most specific predicates and then more general).

Also, all handlers (but not their predicates) are processed in parallel.

I suggest including it with alias to get cleaner code:

import th "github.com/dsurl/tgo/handlers"

Here is example of using handlers with long pulling updates. You can see full list of available predicates in handlers/predicates, or define your own.

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"os"

	"github.com/dsurl/tgo"
	th "github.com/dsurl/tgo/handlers"
	tu "github.com/dsurl/tgo/utils"
)

func main() {
	botToken := os.Getenv("TOKEN")

	// Note: Please keep in mind that default logger may expose sensitive information,
	// use in development only
	bot, err := tgo.NewBot(botToken, tgo.WithDefaultDebugLogger())
	if err != nil {
		fmt.Println(err)
		os.Exit(1)
	}

	// Get updates channel
	updates, _ := bot.UpdatesViaLongPulling(nil)

	// Create bot handler and specify from where to get updates
	bh, _ := th.NewBotHandler(bot, updates)

	// Stop handling updates
	defer bh.Stop()

	// Stop getting updates
	defer bot.StopLongPulling()

	// Register new handler with match on command `/start`
	bh.Handle(func(bot *tgo.Bot, update tgo.Update) {
		// Send message
		_, _ = bot.SendMessage(tu.Message(
			tu.ID(update.Message.Chat.ID),
			fmt.Sprintf("Hello %s!", update.Message.From.FirstName),
		))
	}, th.CommandEqual("start"))

	// Register new handler with match on any command
	// Handlers will match only once and in order of registration, 
	// so this handler will be called on any command except `/start` command
	bh.Handle(func(bot *tgo.Bot, update tgo.Update) {
		// Send message
		_, _ = bot.SendMessage(tu.Message(
			tu.ID(update.Message.Chat.ID),
			"Unknown command, use /start",
		))
	}, th.AnyCommand())

	// Start handling updates
	bh.Start()
}

Also, just handling updates is useful, but handling specific updates like messages or callback queries in most of the cases are more straightforward and provide cleaner code.

So TGO provides specific handles for all fields of tgo.Update. See the list of all available handler types in handlers/update_handlers, or define your own.

package main

import (
	"fmt"

	"github.com/dsurl/tgo"
	th "github.com/dsurl/tgo/handlers"
	tu "github.com/dsurl/tgo/utils"
)

func main() {
	// ... initializing bot and bot handler 
	// (full example in examples/handler_specific/main.go)

	// Register new handler with match on command `/start`
	bh.HandleMessage(func(bot *tgo.Bot, message tgo.Message) {
		// Send message with inline keyboard
		_, _ = bot.SendMessage(tu.Message(
			tu.ID(message.Chat.ID),
			fmt.Sprintf("Hello %s!", message.From.FirstName),
		).WithReplyMarkup(tu.InlineKeyboard(
			tu.InlineKeyboardRow(
				tu.InlineKeyboardButton("Go!").WithCallbackData("go"),
			)),
		))
	}, th.CommandEqual("start"))

	// Register new handler with match on call back query 
	// with data equal to `go` and non nil message
	bh.HandleCallbackQuery(func(bot *tgo.Bot, query tgo.CallbackQuery) {
		// Send message
		_, _ = bot.SendMessage(tu.Message(tu.ID(query.Message.Chat.ID), "GO GO GO"))

		// Answer callback query
		_ = bot.AnswerCallbackQuery(tu.CallbackQuery(query.ID).WithText("Done"))
	}, th.AnyCallbackQueryWithMessage(), th.CallbackDataEqual("go"))

	// ... start bot handler
}

🎨 Contribution

Contribution guidelines listed here.

🔐 License

TGO is distributed under MIT licence.