Setting up a Telegram bot without a server

Question

I'm not well versed with web techniques and would like to know if there's a way - an idea would be to use setWebhook - to make a telegram bot do simple stuff (like simply repeat the same message over and over again whenever someone sends it a message) without setting up a server.

I think there might be no way around it because I need to parse the JSON object to get the chat_id to be able to send messages... but I'm hoping someone here might know a way.

e.g.

https://api.telegram.org/bot<token>/setWebHook?url=https://api.telegram.org/bot<token>/sendMessage?text=Hello%26chat_id=<somehow get the chat_id>

I've tested it with a hard-coded chat id and it works... but of course it'll always only send messages to that same chat, regardless of where it received the message.

Answer 1

Here is a very simple Python bot example, you can run this on your PC no need for a server.

import requests
import json
from time import sleep

# This will mark the last update we've checked
last_update = 0
# Here, insert the token BotFather gave you for your bot.
token = 'YOUR_TOKEN_HERE'
# This is the url for communicating with your bot
url = 'https://api.telegram.org/bot%s/' % token

# We want to keep checking for updates. So this must be a never ending loop
while True:
    # My chat is up and running, I need to maintain it! Get me all chat updates
    get_updates = json.loads(requests.get(url + 'getUpdates').content)
    # Ok, I've got 'em. Let's iterate through each one
    for update in get_updates['result']:
        # First make sure I haven't read this update yet
        if last_update < update['update_id']:
            last_update = update['update_id']
            # I've got a new update. Let's see what it is.
            if 'message' in update:
                # It's a message! Let's send it back :D
                requests.get(url + 'sendMessage', params=dict(chat_id=update['message']['chat']['id'], text=update['message']['text']))
    # Let's wait a few seconds for new updates
    sleep(3)

Source

Bot I'm working on

Answer 2

That's really interesting but definitely you'll need a server to parse the JSON value and get the chat_id out of it.