Not just a Python wrapper around the Telegram Bot API

Stay tuned for library updates and new releases on our Telegram Channel.

• Introduction
• Telegram API support
• Installing
• Getting started
  1. Learning by example
  2. Logging
  3. Documentation
• Getting help
• Contributing
• License

This library provides a pure Python interface for the Telegram Bot API. It works with Python versions from 2.6+ (Note: Support for 2.6 will be dropped at some point this year. 2.7 will still be supported). It also works with Google App Engine.

In addition to the pure API implementation, this library features a number of high-level classes to make the development of bots easy and straightforward. These classes are contained in the telegram.ext submodule.

As of 28. May 2016, all types and methods of the Telegram Bot API are supported.

You can install or upgrade python-telegram-bot with:

$ pip install python-telegram-bot --upgrade

Our Wiki contains a lot of resources to get you started with python-telegram-bot:

• Introduction to the API
• Tutorial: Your first Bot

Other references:

• Telegram API documentation
• python-telegram-bot documentation

We believe that the best way to learn and understand this simple package is by example. So here are some examples for you to review. Even if it's not your approach for learning, please take a look at echobot2 (below), it is de facto the base for most of the bots out there. Best of all, the code for these examples are released to the public domain, so you can start by grabbing the code and building on top of it.

• echobot2 replies back messages.
• inlinebot basic example of an inline bot.
• state machine bot keeps the state for individual users, useful for multipart conversations.
• timerbot uses the JobQueue to send timed messages.

Examples using only the pure API:

• echobot replies back messages.
• roboed talks to Robô Ed.

Look at the examples on the wiki to see other bots the community has built.

This library uses the logging module. To set up logging to standard output, put:

import logging
logging.basicConfig(level=logging.DEBUG,
                    format='%(asctime)s - %(name)s - %(levelname)s - %(message)s')

at the beginning of your script.

You can also use logs in your application by calling logging.getLogger() and setting the log level you want:

logger = logging.getLogger()
logger.setLevel(logging.INFO)

If you want DEBUG logs instead:

logger.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)

python-telegram-bot's documentation lives at pythonhosted.org.

You can get help in several ways:

1. We have a vibrant community of developers helping each other in our Telegram group. Join us!
2. Our Wiki pages offer a growing amount of resources.
3. You can ask for help on Stack Overflow using the python-telegram-bot tag.
4. As last resort, the developers are ready to help you with serious issues.

Contributions of all sizes are welcome. Please review our contribution guidelines to get started. You can also help by reporting bugs.

You may copy, distribute and modify the software provided that modifications are described and licensed for free under LGPL-3. Derivatives works (including modifications or anything statically linked to the library) can only be redistributed under LGPL-3, but applications that use the library don't have to be.