powerful and epic overall, puregram allows you to easily interact with telegram bot api via node.js 😎👍

first, what are telegram bots? telegram has their own bot accounts. bots are special telegram accounts that can be only accessed via code and were designed to handle messages, inline queries and callback queries automatically. users can interact with bots by sending them messages, commands and inline requests.

const { Telegram } = require('puregram')

const telegram = Telegram.fromToken(process.env.TOKEN)

telegram.updates.on('message', context => context.reply('hey!'))

telegram.updates.startPolling()

note you can find more examples here

• why puregram? (very important!)
• getting started
  • getting token
  • installation
  • usage
  • what is UpdatesFilter?
  • calling api methods
    • suppressing api errors
  • media
    • sending media (MediaSource)
    • downloading media (MediaSourceTo)
    • sending input media (InputMedia)
  • using markdown (parse_mode)
  • keyboards (reply_markup)
• bot information
• what are contexts?
• action controller
• Context and its varieties
• middlewares
• hooks
• typescript usage
• faq
• ecosystem

• written by starków ⚠
• powered by j++team ⚠
• very cool package name
• package itself is cool (at least i think so)
• works (i guess)
• i understand only about 30% of my code
• because why not?

if you want to develop a bot, firstly you need to create it via @botfather and get token from it via /newbot command.

token looks like this: 123456:abc-def1234ghikl-zyx57w2v1u123ew11

node.js version must be greater or equal than LTS (16.15.0 atm)

$ yarn add puregram
$ npm i -S puregram

let's start with creating a Telegram instance:

const { Telegram } = require('puregram')

const bot = new Telegram({
  token: '123456:abc-def1234ghikl-zyx57w2v1u123ew11'
})

You can also initialize it via Telegram.fromToken:

const bot = Telegram.fromToken('123456:abc-def1234ghikl-zyx57w2v1u123ew11')

now, we want to get updates from the bot. how can we do it?

there are only two ways of getting updates right now:

1. polling via getUpdates method... or just using puregram's built-in polling logic:

telegram.updates.startPolling()

2. setting up a Webhook via setWebhook method:

const { createServer } = require('http')

// you need to send this request only once
telegram.api.setWebhook({
  url: 'https://www.example.com/'
})

const server = createServer(telegram.updates.getWebhookMiddleware())

server.listen(8443, () => console.log('started'))

remember that there are only four accepted ports for now: 443, 80, 88 and 8443. they are listed here under the notes section.

note more webhook examples are available here

now with this setup we can catch updates like this:

telegram.updates.on('message', context => context.reply('yoo!'))

supported events are listed here

if you've had to handle multiple attachments at once you'd know that in telegram every single attachment is a separate message. that makes it pretty hard for us to handle multiple attachs at once. here it comes - the mergeMediaEvents option in Telegram's constructor

const telegram = new Telegram({
  token: process.env.TOKEN,
  mergeMediaEvents: true
})

what's changed? if you'd set up a handler like this:

telegram.updates.on('message', (context) => {
  console.log(context)
})

and then sent an album, you'd see that there will be some mediaGroup field in the MessageContext. that mediaGroup (instance of a MediaGroup class) contains some getters:

telegram.updates.on('message', (context) => {
  if (context.isMediaGroup()) {
    // INFO: all is* getters are methods in puregram@^2.9.0
    // INFO: if you are using puregram < 2.9.0, consider using `isMediaGroup` as a getter
    return context.reply(`this album contains ${context.mediaGroup.attachments.length} attachments!`)
  }
})

if you want to handle updates by yourself, you can use Updates.handleUpdate method, which takes one argument and this argument is raw Telegram update:

/** let's pretend i'm polling updates manually... */

const update = await getUpdate(...)

let context

try {
  context = telegram.updates.handleUpdate(update)
} catch (error) {
  console.log('update is not supported', update)
}

// voila! now you have the right context
// (or you don't if the event is not supported 😢)

as mentioned in getUpdates documentation,

Specify an empty list to receive all update types except chat_member (default). If not specified, the previous setting will be used.

as you can see, you have to specify chat_member in order to receive chat_member updates... but you also will have to specify every single update type that you're going to handle like this:

{
  allowedUpdates: ['chat_member', 'message', 'callback_query', 'channel_post', 'edited_message', 'edited_channel_post', ...]
}

not very convenient, is it? that's why we've createed UpdatesFilter: a class containing a few static methods that will allow you to specify all update types or even exclude some!

const { Telegram, UpdatesFilter } = require('puregram')

const telegram = Telegram.fromToken(process.env.TOKEN, {
  allowedUpdates: UpdatesFilter.all()
})

// puregram will now handle every single update including `chat_member` and others (if they're listed under the `UpdateType` enum)

const { Telegram, UpdatesFilter } = require('puregram')

const telegram = Telegram.fromToken(process.env.TOKEN)

telegram.updates.startPolling({
  allowedUpdates: UpdatesFilter.except('callback_query')
})

telegram.updates.on('callback_query', (context) => {
  // this will never be called.

  return cry()
})

there are three ways of calling telegram bot api methods:

1. using the telegram.api.call(method, params?) (useful when new bot api update is released and the package is not updated yet):

const me = await telegram.api.call('getMe')

2. using telegram.api.method(params?):

const me = await telegram.api.getMe()

3. using context methods:

telegram.updates.on('message', context => context.send('13² = 169! well, i mean "169", not "169!"... fuck.'))

sometimes you dont want to deal with the errors sent by the api, sometimes you just dont want to create an empty try/catch statement for that. this is where suppress parameter in the api call params comes in! you can pass suppress: true to any api method and in case the error happens puregram will not throw an error, but will return json object with ok: false and error_code and description properties.

const result = await telegram.api.sendChatAction({
  chat_id: getRandomInt(1, 999_999_999),
  action: 'typing',
  suppress: true // <- the
})

// if the method was successfully executed, `result` will be `true`
// otherwise, a `{ ok: false, error_code: ..., description: ... }` object will be returned
// of course, there is a static method for that:
if (Telegram.isErrorResponse(result)) {
  // result is ApiResponseError
  // TODO: handle error
}

// result is true

const result = await context.sendChatAction('typing', { suppress: true })

if (Telegram.isErrorResponse(result)) {
  return
}

puregram allows you to send your local media by using MediaSource class. you can put URLs, Buffers, streams and paths in it.

/** let's imagine we have an image called puppy.jpg in this directory... */

const { createReadStream } = require('fs')

const path = './puppy.jpg'
const stream = createReadStream(path)
const buffer = getBuffer(path)
const url = 'https://puppies.com/random-puppy'
const fileId = 'this-is-probably-a-real-file-id-for-sure'

telegram.updates.on('message', (context) => {
  await Promise.all([
    context.sendPhoto(MediaSource.path(path), { caption: 'puppy via path!' }),
    context.sendDocument(MediaSource.stream(stream, { filename: 'puppy.jpg' }), { caption: 'more puppies via stream!' }),
    context.sendPhoto(MediaSource.buffer(buffer), { caption: 'one more puppy via buffer!' }),
    context.sendPhoto(MediaSource.url(url), { caption: 'some random puppy sent using an url!!!' }),
    context.sendVideo(MediaSource.fileId(fileId), { caption: 'a video sent via file ID' })
  ])
})

this works for every method that can send media.

telegram bot api allows you to download any media you want by simply calling getFile({ file_id }), extracting file_path from it and constructing a certain URL that you can then fetch and receive the result, the final media.

that's a little too much work just for one file, isn't it? because of this, puregram has a mixin that allows just that.

telegram.updates.on('message', async (context) => {
  if (!context.hasAttachmentType('photo')) {
    return
  }

  const buffer = await context.download()

  // just for sake of testing...
  return context.sendDocument(MediaSource.buffer(buffer, { filename: 'photo.png' }))
})

of course, you can download an attachment not only via Buffers, but via path and a stream. we use MediaSourceTo (not MediaSource) for that.

telegram.updates.on('message', async (context) => {
  if (!context.hasAttachmentType('photo')) {
    return
  }

  const PATH = resolve(__dirname, 'photo.png')

  // save a photo to {__dirname}/photo.png
  await context.download(MediaSourceTo.path(PATH))

  return context.sendDocument(MediaSource.path(PATH, { filename: 'photo.png' }))
})

telegram.updates.on('message', async (context) => {
  if (!context.hasAttachmentType('photo')) {
    return
  }

  // process the photo via stream
  const stream = new PassThrough() // bidirectional stream

  await context.download(MediaSourceTo.stream(stream))

  return context.sendDocument(MediaSource.stream(stream, { filename: 'photo.png' }))
})

telegram.updates.on('message', async (context) => {
  if (!context.hasAttachmentType('photo')) {
    return
  }

  const buffer = await context.download(MediaSourceTo.buffer())

  return context.sendDocument(MediaSource.buffer(buffer, { filename: 'photo.png' }))
})

under the hood context.download(...) uses telegram.downloadFile(...) method. it can be called with either file_id or an attachment

const fileId = getFileIdSomehow()

const result = await telegram.downloadFile(fileId, MediaSourceTo.buffer())

const attachment = context.attachment

const PATH = resolve(__dirname, 'test.png')

const result = await telegram.downloadFile(attachment, MediaSourceTo.path(PATH))

some of the methods (like editMessageMedia or sendMediaGroup) require such objects like TelegramInputMediaPhoto, TelegramInputMediaVideo and so on

puregram provides InputMedia class which allows you to easily map your MediaSource value to a piece of input media!

const { InputMedia, MediaSource } = require('puregram')

telegram.api.editMessageMedia({
  chat_id: 398859857,
  message_id: 12345,
  media: InputMedia.document(MediaSource.path('./README.md'), {
    caption: 'Epic shit'
  })
})

context.sendMediaGroup([
  InputMedia.photo(MediaSource.path('./image.png')),
  InputMedia.video(MediaSource.url('https://example.com/path/to/video.mp4'), {
    caption: 'here goes caption'
  })
])

you can even use InputMedia on context.sendMedia!

context.sendMedia(
  InputMedia.photo(MediaSource.path('./image.png'), {
    caption: 'EPIC!!❕❕❕❕❕❗️❗️'
  })
)

if you want to use markdown or html, there are two ways of doing that:

1. using built-in HTML, Markdown and MarkdownV2 classes:

const message = HTML.bold('very bold, such html')

3. writing tags manually as it is told here:

const message = '*very bold, such markdown*'

anyways, after writing the text you need to add parse_mode field. there are also two ways actually, there are three ways of of doing that!

3. writing actual parse mode code like a boss:

{ parse_mode: 'markdown' }

7. passing parse mode class like a cheems:

{ parse_mode: HTML }

• passing a value from ParseMode enum like a chad would do:

{ parse_mode: ParseMode.Markdown }

note yeah also ParseMode can be imported from puregram natively:

const { ParseMode } = require('puregram')

final api request will look like this:

const message = `some ${HTML.bold('bold')} and ${HTML.italic('italic')} here`

context.send(message, { parse_mode: HTML })

context.send(`imagine using _classes_ for parse mode, *lol*!`, { parse_mode: 'markdown' })

the truth...

fuck this meme is obsolete now that i added ParseMode enum

since markdown-v2 requires a lot of chars to be escaped, i've came up with a beautiful idea...

const message = MarkdownV2.build`
  damn that's a cool usage of ${MarkdownV2.bold('template strings')}!
  ${MarkdownV2.italic('foo')} bar ${MarkdownV2.underline('baz')}
  starkow v3 when
`

note more markdown examples are available here

puregram has built-in classes for creating basic, inline, force-reply etc. keyboards. they are pretty much easy to use and are definitely more comfortable than building a json.

to create a keyboard, you need to call keyboard method from the keyboard class you chose. this method accepts an array of button rows.

const { InlineKeyboard, Keyboard } = require('puregram')

const keyboard = InlineKeyboard.keyboard([
  [ // first row
    InlineKeyboard.textButton({ // first row, first button
      text: 'some text here',
      payload: 'such payload'
    }),

    InlineKeyboard.textButton({ // first row, second button
      text: 'some more text here',
      payload: { json: true }
    })
  ],

  [ // second row
    InlineKeyboard.urlButton({ // second row, first button
      text: 'some url button',
      url: 'https://example.com'
    })
  ]
])

// one-row keyboard with two buttons, no brackets for rows needed
const keyboard = Keyboard.keyboard([
  Keyboard.textButton('some one-row keyboard'),
  Keyboard.textButton('with some buttons')
]).resize()

note starting from puregram@2.14.0, you can even use simple strings instead of Keyboard.textButtons!

// two-row keyboard with one button on each row via strings!
const keyboard = Keyboard.keyboard([
  [
    'first row, one button'
  ],
  [
    'second row, still one button!'
  ]
]).resize()

there are also keyboard builders which are designed to be building a keyboard step by step:

const { KeyboardBuilder } = require('puregram')

const keyboard = new KeyboardBuilder()
  .textButton('first row, first button')
  .row()
  .textButton('second row, first button')
  .textButton('second row, second button')
  .resize() // keyboard will be much smaller

to send keyboard, you simply need to pass the generated value in reply_markup field:

context.send('look, here\'s a keyboard!', { reply_markup: keyboard })

Note more keyboard examples are available here

if you are using puregram's built-in polling logic, after Updates.startPolling() is called you have access to Telegram.bot property:

telegram.updates.startPolling().then(
  () => console.log(`@${telegram.bot.username} started polling`)
)

Context is a class, containing current update object and it's payload (via update[updateType]). it is loaded with a ton of useful (maybe?) getters and methods that were made to shorten your code while being same efficient and executing the same code.

telegram.updates.on('message', (context) => {
  const id = context.senderId
  // is the same as
  const id = context.from?.id
})

telegram.updates.on('message', (context) => {
  context.send('hey!')
  // equals to
  telegram.api.sendMessage({
    chat_id: context.chat?.id,
    text: 'hey!'
  })
})

every context has telegram property, so you can call api methods almost everywhere if you have a context nearby.

telegram.updates.on('message', async (context) => {
  const me = await context.telegram.api.getMe()
})

sendChatAction is a method that requires to be called every 5 seconds before the action is complete. but how do you actually implement that?

even the simplest solutions require some hacky workarounds. that's why puregram encapsulates these hacks and you can use them right away, even with a controller!

telegram.updates.on('message', (context) => {
  // this thing will be sending `context.sendChatAction('typing')`
  // every 5 seconds until `controller.abort()` is called
  const controller = context.createActionController('typing')

  controller.start()

  await sleep(14_000) // just to make sure everything works

  controller.stop() // make sure to call that!!!

  return context.send('yeah so we are unable to deliver your message rn sorry')
})

of course, you are able to change controller.action and all the options mentioned below while the controller is running

every update in puregram is handled by a special context, which is detected via the update key.

every context (except for manually created ones and some that were created after methods like sendMessage) will have updateId and update properties.

for example, if we have the message update, we will get MessageContext on this update, CallbackQueryContext for callback_query update and so on.

every context requires one argument:

interface ContextOptions {
  // main Telegram instance
  telegram: Telegram

  // update type, e.g. 'message', 'callback_query'
  updateType: UpdateName
  
  // whole update object
  // optional, allows user to do the `context.update` to get the whole update object
  update?: TelegramUpdate

  // update id, located at TelegramUpdate
  // optional, allows user to get this update's id
  updateId?: number
}

note some contexts may be combined by a single structure because of how telegram bot api is built. what does this mean?

simplest examples are extra contexts: their payload lies inside of Message structure itself, so they are naturally also Messages, meaning that they are also MessageContexts.

telegram.updates.on('forum_topic_created', (context) => {
  // technically speaking, context is `ForumTopicCreatedContext`, but internally it was almost constructed
  // into MessageContext because of the `forum_topic_created` property lying inside of `Message` so yeah
})

you can also create any context manually:

const { MessageContext } = require('puregram')

const update = await getUpdate()

const context = new MessageContext({
  telegram,
  update,
  updateType: 'message',
  updateId: update.update_id
})

note every context is listed here

puregram implements middlewares logic, so you can use them to expand your context variables or measure other middlewares. next() is used to call the next middleware on the chain and wait until it's done

• measuring the time it takes to process the update:

telegram.updates.use(async (context, next) => {
  const start = Date.now()

  await next() // next() is async, so we need to await it

  const end = Date.now()

  console.log(`${context.updateId ?? '[unknown]'} processed in ${end - start}ms`)
})

• extending the context:

telegram.updates.use(async (context, next) => {
  context.user = await getUser(context.senderId)

  return next()
})

telegram.updates.on('message', (context) => {
  // here we can access property we made in the middleware
  return context.send(`hey, ${context.user.name}!`)
})

since v2.19.0, puregram has hooks - a way to intercept the outgoing (and ingoing soon) requests and manipulate data in them. this means that you can create such an interceptor that will, for example, always add parse_mode: 'html' to your sendMessage calls, or even abort (cancel) the requests!

telegram.onBeforeRequest((context) => {
  if (context.path === 'sendMessage') {
    context.params.parse_mode = 'html'
  }

  return context
})

telegram.updates.on('message', (context) => {
  return context.reply('this <b>will be</b> <i>parsed</i> correctly!')
})

there are currently five hooks that you can use. each of them has their own set of variables called context. you need to return the same structure of an object that was given to you when you caught it

each and every context has keys that the previous interceptor had. for example, take this BaseContext that every other context extends off of:

every context listed below will have those controller and init keys PLUS their own keys

hooks are listed below in order of their execution from top to bottom:

1. onBeforeRequest: this hook is processed when the API request has been just caught and is starting to set everything up

2. onRequestIntercept: hook that is executed right before the API call happens to be processed

3. API call. no hook for this, sorry!

4. onResponseIntercept: API call has succeeded (probably), response and json are yours to experiment with

5. onAfterRequest: everything that has to be done had been done, literally cleaning time

no additional keys are provided for onAfterRequest

and one more, onError, which is covering the area between onRequestIntercept and onAfterRequest hooks

... or, to put simply, "how do i export more than one hook and use it easily?"

puregram provides telegram.useHooks(hooks) method that allows you to pass multiple hooks of different types easily and instantly. this gradually helps importing several hooks at once if you're, for example, importing them from another package:

// lets pretend `hooks` is a function that returns `puregram.Hooks` object (will be discussed below)
import { hooks as imagination } from 'imaginary-package'

telegram.useHooks(imagination())

// ... that's literally it!

under the imaginary hood, hooks (a.k.a. imagination in this case) is a function (does not need to be a function though) that returns puregram.Hooks interface - an object that you can import from puregram/hooks:

import { Hooks } from 'puregram/hooks'

export function hooks(): Hooks {
  return () => ({
    onBeforeRequest: [(context) => { ... }],
    onAfterRequest: [(context) => { ... }]
  })
}

that's it!

surely enough, you can extend contexts with extra fields and properties you need by intersectioning base context with new properties.

interface ExtraData {
  name: string
  id?: number
}

/** ... */

telegram.updates.use(async (context, next) => {
  const user = await getUser(context.senderId)

  context.name = user.name
  context.id = user.id

  return next()
})

/**
 * there are 2 ways of updating context's type:
 * 1. external type override:
 * `(context: MessageContext & ExtraData) => ...`
 * 2. using generics:
 * `telegram.updates.on<ExtraData>(...)`
 * 
 * below I will be using the second way.
 */

telegram.updates.on<ExtraData>('message', (context) => {
  assert(context.name !== undefined)
})

all Telegram interfaces and method types are auto-generated and put in different files: telegram-interfaces.ts for interfaces and methods.ts + api-methods.ts for api methods. they all exist at the paths puregram/telegram-interfaces, puregram/methods and puregram/api-methods respectively. also there's a puregram/generated export which exports everything from lib/generated folder (all of those listed before).

import { TelegramUpdate, TelegramMessage } from 'puregram/generated'

import { SendDocumentParams } from 'puregram/generated'

import { CopyMessageParams } from 'puregram/methods'
import { InputFile, TelegramUpdate } from 'puregram/telegram-interfaces'

puregram implements type predicates (so-called type guards) on some context methods (mostly on those that have is/has/can at the start of the field name) in order to keep connection between types and actual values

telegram.updates.on('message', (context) => {
  const originalText = context.text
  // if we look at the `originalText`'s type we will see `string | undefined`

  // but luckily for us there is such type predicate as `hasText()` which tells typescript that `context.text` is definitely a `string`!
  if (context.hasText()) {
    const text = context.text
    // `text`'s type is now `string`. `undefined` is gone! hurray!!
  }
})

also, Context.is is also a type guard! this means that you can do this and get a proper context typing whenever you want:

if (context.is('callback_query')) {
  // context is now CallbackQueryContext
}

this is pretty useful when you have context: Context and especially convenient because you don't have to import the right contexts just to do this boring thing:

if (context instanceof CallbackQueryContext) {
  // this sucks! context.is('callback_query') is better   👍😎👍
}

note because of type guards, it was decided to transition all getters starting with is/has/can into methods in all structures. this means that if you see a field starting with aforementioned parts you can be sure that this is definitely a method and not a getter or a property!

you are trying to use @puregram/scenes or @puregram/hear with @puregram/session, but you're confusing the middlewares order

you should firstly initialize @puregram/session's middleware and only then initialize other middlewares, depending on it:

const hearManager = new HearManager()

// 1. session middleware first
telegram.updates.use(session())

// 2. hear middleware second
telegram.updates.on('message', hearManager.middleware)

if you want to inspect out- and ingoing requests made by puregram, you will need to enable DEBUG environment variable so the package understands you are ready for logs.

> set "DEBUG=puregram:all" & node index

> $env:DEBUG = "puregram:all"; node index

$ DEBUG=puregram:all node index

totally! recently puregram has created its own forum! it has every topic needed and will be expanding if it needs to!

if you ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ what to do and want to ask a question, @pureforum is definitely the way!

because i dont like doing anything that looks official so i do my own styling 😎

btw did you see these issues?

• #63
• #62

they confirm im against anything that looks kinda too official 😉

these packages are created by the puregram community (and not only) and are expanding packages functionality (i guess).

• @puregram/hear: simple implementation of hear system
• @puregram/scenes: simple implementation of middleware-based scene management
• @puregram/session: simple implementation of sessions
• @puregram/utils: useful utilities
• @puregram/prompt: basic prompt system implementation
• @puregram/callback-data: basic callback data validation and serialization
• @puregram/markup: simple yet powerful markup system
• @puregram/media-cacher: cache sent media file_ids with ease!

• nestjs-puregram: puregram sdk for nestjs

• negezor (negezor/vk-io) — for inspiration, package idea (!) and some code and implementation ideas