bot-echo

This is my first approach to Telegram Bots. Is the baseline to made another bots. Also is used to solve a problem in a non-profit organization communication channel.

Description

Is a springframework app that runs on a server and pull messages from telegram in order to send via email to a predefined address.

This bot can be used by as many users as you want. The user begins a chat with the bot and any message that user send, is re-send to configured email address.

Use the Telegram Spring boot starter from https://github.com/xabgesagtx.

Configuration

In order to use the app, you need to configure two elements:

• email
• telegram bot

Both configuration are sensible and should to be hidden in repository.

The application.yml uses maven resource tokens in order to replace them on compilation phase.

The values, typically, are on settings.xml or in a external properties file.

Email

The replacement tokens for email are:

Token	Description
bot.email.host	The email server host name
bot.email.username	The email username to open session
bot.email.password	The password

Telegram bot

The replacement tokens for telegram bot are:

Token	Description
bot.tg.token	The token generated for bot
bot.tg.username	The userename of bot
bot.tg.email.to	The to address when sending the email (typically any administrator or master)
bot.tg.email.from	The from address when sending the email
bot.tg.missatges.benvinguda	A welcome message for the user when starts the bot
bot.tg.missatges.resposta	A response message for the user after receive their text message via telegram bot chat

Use

Test from command line

You can run as any other spring-boot app and use them.

Use as a linux systemd service

At src/assembly there are some template files to install the bot as a linux systemd service:

• telegram-bot-echo.sh is a bash script to start the bot
• telegram-bot-echo.service is a systemd service descriptor for the bot

Should to copy the two files and the build jar into a specific directory of your election.

Update the files to indicate the correct path to your installation folder and the JAVA HOME.

If you want to use external configuration, create a subdir named config and place in it a application.yaml file with your specific configuration (you can copy and paste contents of src/main/resources/application.yaml and update with configuration).

For configuration take effect, should to update the file telegram-bot-echo.sh and comment and uncomment the two lines that set the CP environment variable.

These templates use a specific user and group for execution:

• user: bots
• group: bots

You should to create them and change ownership of installation directory to these user and group.

When installation is completed, can test simply running telegram-bot-echo.sh from command line.

If all is ok, you can install the service:

sudo cp telegram-bot-echo.service /etc/systemd/system
sudo systemctl daemon reload

And then operate:

Start:

sudo systemctl start telegram-bot-echo

Enable on boot:

sudo systemctl enable telegram-bot-echo

Check status:

sudo systemctl status telegram-bot-echo