Telebot

C Library for Telegram bot API that uses json-c and libcurl. Head over to Telegram Bots page to read about how to register your brand new bot with Telegram platform and see it in action using telebot.

Building

You need to install libraries and build tools such as CMake. On Debian-based Linux distributions you can do it as follows:

sudo apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev libjson-c-dev cmake binutils make

On Mac OSX, first install macports from MacPorts and in Terminal

sudo port install cmake json-c curl

To build the library run following commands:

cd [your repository]
mkdir -p build && cd build
cmake ..
make

For debug build

mkdir -p build && cd build
cmake .. -DDEBUG=1
make

Testing

Place Telegam Bot API Token in .token file in the root folder of the repository, and run as below

./build/test/testbot

Sample

Following sample creates a simple dummy bot which echoes back the messages sent to it. A more comprehensive test bot is built as testbot executable under Build/test folder. It supports various commands to test APIs, polls, custom keyboards, and multimedia sending. The executable expects and reads bot token from .token file on the same location.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <pthread.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <telebot.h>
 
#define SIZE_OF_ARRAY(array) (sizeof(array) / sizeof(array[0]))
 
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    printf("Welcome to Echobot\n");
 
    FILE *fp = fopen(".token", "r");
 if (fp == NULL)
    {
        printf("Failed to open .token file\n");
 return -1;
    }
 
 char token[1024];
 if (fscanf(fp, "%s", token) == 0)
    {
        printf("Failed to read token\n");
        fclose(fp);
 return -1;
    }
    printf("Token: %s\n", token);
    fclose(fp);
 
 telebot_handler_t handle;
 if (telebot_create(&handle, token) != TELEBOT_ERROR_NONE)
    {
        printf("Telebot create failed\n");
 return -1;
    }
 
 telebot_user_t me;
 if (telebot_get_me(handle, &me) != TELEBOT_ERROR_NONE)
    {
        printf("Failed to get bot information\n");
 telebot_destroy(handle);
 return -1;
    }
 
    printf("ID: %d\n", me.id);
    printf("First Name: %s\n", me.first_name);
    printf("User Name: %s\n", me.username);
 
 telebot_put_me(&me);
 
 int index, count, offset = -1;
 telebot_error_e ret;
 telebot_message_t message;
 telebot_update_type_e update_types[] = {TELEBOT_UPDATE_TYPE_MESSAGE};
 
 while (1)
    {
 telebot_update_t *updates;
        ret = telebot_get_updates(handle, offset, 20, 0, update_types, 0, &updates, &count);
 if (ret != TELEBOT_ERROR_NONE)
 continue;
        printf("Number of updates: %d\n", count);
 for (index = 0; index < count; index++)
        {
            message = updates[index].message;
 if (message.text)
            {
                printf("%s: %s \n", message.from->first_name, message.text);
 if (strstr(message.text, "/dice"))
                {
 telebot_send_dice(handle, message.chat->id, false, 0, "");
                }
 else
                {
 char str[4096];
 if (strstr(message.text, "/start"))
                    {
                        snprintf(str, SIZE_OF_ARRAY(str), "Hello %s", message.from->first_name);
                    }
 else
                    {
                        snprintf(str, SIZE_OF_ARRAY(str), "<i>%s</i>", message.text);
                    }
                    ret = telebot_send_message(handle, message.chat->id, str, "HTML", false, false, updates[index].message.message_id, "");
                }
 if (ret != TELEBOT_ERROR_NONE)
                {
                    printf("Failed to send message: %d \n", ret);
                }
            }
            offset = updates[index].update_id + 1;
        }
 telebot_put_updates(updates, count);
 
        sleep(1);
    }
 
 telebot_destroy(handle);
 
 return 0;
}