This is a template to host in OpenShift a Python 3 Telegram bot using Flask. Build over aaossa/flask-openshift

Create a Python application with this command

rhc app-create <project> python-3.3 --from-code https://github.com/aaossa/Telegram-bot-in-OpenShift.git

If you want to use Python 3.5, I recommend this custom cartridge. You can create your app with this command

rhc app create <project> https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Grief/openshift-cartridge-python-3.5/master/metadata/manifest.yml diy-0.1 --from-code https://github.com/aaossa/Telegram-bot-in-OpenShift.git

If you're interested in create your own app, you can use my template to create your own with just one command

To create a bot, you have to talk to @BotFather and follow this guide (is official). As a recomendation, learn everything you can about Telegram bots in their documentation. Anyway, this is the important part:

Create a new bot

Use the /newbot command to create a new bot. The BotFather will ask you for a name and username, then generate an authorization token for your new bot.

The name of your bot will be displayed in contact details and elsewhere.

The Username is a short name, to be used in mentions and telegram.me links. Usernames are 5-32 characters long and are case insensitive, but may only include Latin characters, numbers, and underscores. Your bot's username must end in ‘bot’, e.g. ‘tetris_bot’ or ‘TetrisBot’.

The token is a string along the lines of 110201543:AAHdqTcvCH1vGWJxfSeofSAs0K5PALDsaw that will be required to authorize the bot and send requests to the Bot API.

Now we must set some environment variables in openshift:

TELEGRAM_BOT_USERNAME: Used to detect mentions to your bot.

TELEGRAM_SECRET_URL: This bot works with webhooks, so we need to be notified of new messages. We don't want to be spammed or attacked, so this value should be secret. Note: Flask uses /<secret_url>, don't use the full url

TELEGRAM_TOKEN: Is our authorization to use the Bot API

rhc env set TELEGRAM_BOT_USERNAME=<username> TELEGRAM_SECRET_URL=<secret_url> TELEGRAM_TOKEN=<token> -a <project>

Once we do this, we must restart the app (you could do this via web too):

rhc app restart <project>

Recomended: Use the Python 3.6 secrets module to create a random and secret url. I made a secrets implementation in case you want to use it.

Now our bot is registered (in Telegram) and is ready to answer our commands (in OpenShift), but our messages to the bot are not sent to OpenShift, we must set the (webhook) url that Telegram will use to communicate with our OpenShift application.

We must use the setWebhook method. Is simpole, is a GET request, so you can do this in your browser or using cURL:

curl https://api.telegram.org/bot<token>/setWebhook?url=https://<project>-<namespace>.rhcloud.com/<secret_url>

Telegram will answer with this:

{
	"ok": true,
	"result": true,
	"description": "Webhook was set"
}

Go to talk your bot (you should find it at telegram.me/<username>) and try the /echo command.

Code licensed under GNU General Public License v3.