Telegram bot made easy, a covid-19 statistics bot.

#telegram #node #javascript #machinelearning

Hello there, i've been struggling for days to make a telegram bot, and after i learn all the basics i've found that it was so easy to do, you can try it here @ElBaronBot .
So let's start making our bot.

Getting the API key from bot father

We start by communicating with bot father via this url @BotFather.
Send it /start
Then we send the new bot command /newbot
The bot father asks us for a name for our bot, that name should end with bot, and i'll name mine Elbaronbot, and send it to it.
Last step the @BotFather give us our Access token to control the bot.

Learning how to send and receive messages.

After getting the API key Lets start doing our favorite thing, which is coding.

Open CMD and type : npm init then give your project a name and a discripting.

Now les install the node telegram bot api via this command :

npm i node-telegram-bot-api

Create a new file lets call it index.js and add this line of code to the header for calling this telegram api library

var TelegramBot = require('node-telegram-bot-api');

Then lets make a connection to telegram, polling: true means that our script will keep fetching the telegram conversations for updates.

// Connecting to telegram
telegram = new TelegramBot("1*******:**************************************", {
    polling: true
});

Now lt's listen to new messages :

// Triggers when new message arrive
telegram.on("text", (message) => {
// Sending message to user.
telegram.sendMessage(message.chat.id, "Hi " + message.chat.first_name + " Its working");
}

Making the bot.

Now since we know how to receive and send messages lets make a covid-19 Bot that help us find covid statistica for every country around the world,

I want to trigger this action only when a user start the message with /covid then a country, like this /covid morocco or /covid usa then so some thing with the country name.

Let's make a function that get a country and scrap for data then send a message to the user.

function GetRes(country, telegram, chat_id) {
    let url = "https://api.coronastatistics.live/countries/" + country;
    let settings = {
        method: "Get"
    };
    fetch(url, settings).then(
        res => res.json()
    ).then((json) => {
        resStr = '
        \n Ressaults for : ' + json.country + '
        \n Total cases : ' + json.cases + '
        \n Total active : ' + json.active + '
        \n Total recovered : ' + json.recovered + '
        \n Total deaths : ' + json.deaths + '
        \n Today cases : ' + json.todayCases + '
        \n Today Deaths : ' + json.todayDeaths + '
        ';
            if (typeof json.country !== 'undefined' && json.country) {
                telegram.sendMessage(chat_id,resStr);
            } else {
                telegram.sendMessage(chat_id,"no such country...");
            }
        });
}

Now let's call the function when someone send us a message starting with /covid

var TelegramBot = require('node-telegram-bot-api');
// Connecting to telegram
telegram = new TelegramBot("1*******:**************************************", {
    polling: true
});
// Triggers when new message arrive
telegram.on("text", (message) => {
// Check if the message start with /covid
    if (message.text.toLowerCase().indexOf("/covid") === 0) {
        // remouve that /covid to get only the country 
        country = message.text.replace("/covid ", "");
        //give it to the function so it take care of the rest
        GetRes(country, telegram, message.chat.id);
    }
}

Conclusions

So this is was a basic telegram bot hope you like it you can try it here @ElBaronBot, leave me your messages, and you can follow me on twitter here 𝙹𝚒𝚋𝚛āʾī𝚕 ⚡