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Building a Telegram Bot in 2024 with Python

Erich Hohenstein · Follow
Published in Level Up Coding
5 min read · Jul 9, 2024

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Telegram Chatbot with Python 2024

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2024/10/25 晚上9:38 Building a Telegram Bot in 2024 with Python | by Erich Hohenstein | Level Up Coding

Look

These last few weeks I have been getting to know more about how to use Large
language models (LLMs) in my own projects.

I am currently working on a building a Financial Assistant powered by AI in order to

help me with my money and budget tracking.

For this, I have tried different approaches to make use of LLMs.

As you can see in this blog, I have found out that Ollama running Llama3 works
amazing in my Macbook Air M2.

Speed almost as fast as ChatGPT. Answers almost as good as ChatGPT.

thumbs up

So then next thing I want to do.

Is to learn how to make a Telegram Bot with Python.

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1. Installations
This step is pretty simple. Just do:

pip install python-telegram-bot

2. The BotFather

The BotFather

Now we have to set up the BotFather.

This is the Bot manager that telegram has prepared for us to make our lives easier.

Just open Telegram and search for “BotFather”.

Follow these steps

1. Hit start

2. Tap or write /newbot

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3. Provide a name for the chatbot. It has to include the word “bot” in the name.

4. Once the bot name is accepted, you will receive an API TOKEN. Save it.

Telegram API Token

5. Message /setdescription and send the description for your bot. This will be shown
when users first open the chat.

6. Message /setabouttext and then sent an “about” to be show in your profile.

Something I wanted to mention before continuing.

There is no need to know how to code to run the code provided.

It is pretty straight forward and you can make some modifications without knowing
how to code.

But if you would like to learn quickly Python.

I made a course using Google Colab Notebooks, so there is no need to install

anything.

Actually the course is more of a challenge.

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2024/10/25 晚上9:38 Building a Telegram Bot in 2024 with Python | by Erich Hohenstein | Level Up Coding

A 10 day coding challenge.

For anybody to take up on coding with Python.

I worked it out to make it as simple as possible.

Explained in english with no complex terminology

Because I wanted to give everyone the chance to learn coding.

You can find the course here.

Let’s now continue!

3. main.py
Create a new Python file and paste the following code:

from typing import Final

# pip install python-telegram-bot

from telegram import Update
from telegram.ext import Application, CommandHandler, MessageHandler, filters,

print('Bot is now starting up...')

API_TOKEN: Final = 'YOUR TOKEN HERE'

BOT_HANDLE: Final = '@your_bot_handle'

# Command to start the bot

async def initiate_command(update: Update, context: ContextTypes.DEFAULT_TYPE):
await update.message.reply_text('Greetings! I am your bot. How can I assist

# Command to provide help information

async def assist_command(update: Update, context: ContextTypes.DEFAULT_TYPE):
await update.message.reply_text('Here comes the help')

# Command for custom functionality

async def personalize_command(update: Update, context: ContextTypes.DEFAULT_TYP
await update.message.reply_text('This is a custom command, you can put what

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2024/10/25 晚上9:38 Building a Telegram Bot in 2024 with Python | by Erich Hohenstein | Level Up Coding

def generate_response(user_input: str) -> str:

# Custom logic for response generation
normalized_input: str = user_input.lower()

if 'hi' in normalized_input:
return 'Hello!'

if 'how are you doing' in normalized_input:

return 'I am functioning properly!'

if 'i would like to subscribe' in normalized_input:

return 'Sure go ahead!'

return 'I didn’t catch that, could you please rephrase?'

async def process_message(update: Update, context: ContextTypes.DEFAULT_TYPE):

# Extract details of the incoming message
chat_type: str = update.message.chat.type
text: str = update.message.text

# Logging for troubleshooting

print(f'User ({update.message.chat.id}) in {chat_type}: "{text}"')

# Handle group messages only if bot is mentioned

if chat_type == 'group':
if BOT_HANDLE in text:
cleaned_text: str = text.replace(BOT_HANDLE, '').strip()
response: str = generate_response(cleaned_text)
else:
return # Ignore messages where bot is not mentioned in a group
else:
response: str = generate_response(text)

# Reply to the user

print('Bot response:', response)
await update.message.reply_text(response)

# Log errors
async def log_error(update: Update, context: ContextTypes.DEFAULT_TYPE):
print(f'Update {update} caused error {context.error}')

# Start the bot

if __name__ == '__main__':
app = Application.builder().token(API_TOKEN).build()

# Register command handlers

app.add_handler(CommandHandler('start', initiate_command))
app.add_handler(CommandHandler('help', assist_command))
app.add_handler(CommandHandler('custom', personalize_command))

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# Register message handler

app.add_handler(MessageHandler(filters.TEXT, process_message))

# Register error handler

app.add_error_handler(log_error)

print('Starting polling...')
# Run the bot
app.run_polling(poll_interval=2)

4. BotFather II
Now, before running.

We need to set up the commands seen in the code: start and help.

Go back the botFather and type: /setcommands

It will ask you to provide the commands for your chatbot.

These are all the “shortcuts” that your telegram bot shows whenever the user types
“\”.

Reply the \setcommands with:

start — Start conversation

help — Help message

This is what will be show as hints for the user whenever they check the available
commands.

5. Run main.py
Run the main.py file.

Once is running, if you go to your telegram app and chat with your new bot you can
try the following commands:

\start and \help

You can also send it any of the following messages and get a reply:

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hi

how are you doing

i would like to subscribe

6. Final comments
I was surprise how well prepared Telegram was for building chatbots.

Easy setup, no complex logins or keys or tokens.

Just a simple interaction with its chatbot.

Of course the chatbot example above is just a basic Telegram chatbot and it doesn’t
do much.

But in my following blogs, I will show how to integrate it with Ollama and Llama3 in
order to have an AI Chatbot right on Telegram.

Thanks for reading!

Python Telegram Chatbot AI Llm

Follow

Written by Erich Hohenstein

194 Followers · Writer for Level Up Coding

Data Scientist | Python | Pandas | Data Mining | Web Scraping | Machine Learning | Power BI | NLP | SQL |
Tableau | HTML/CSS | DAX | Flask | Physics

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