The document outlines the process of integrating a Telegram bot with a Rails application focused on managing subscriptions and broadcasting event listings for the DCRUG community. It details the steps for creating the bot, setting up webhooks, and communicating with subscribers. Additionally, it highlights the use of the telegram-bot-ruby gem for simplifying API interactions and offers insights into real-time event management.

1. Integrating Telegram Bots
with Rails
Chris Downey
cdowney@protonmail.com
Please install Telegram on your phone or laptop for
hands-on experience during the presentation
https://telegram.org/
it will also be more interesting when we get into managing subscriptions
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2. Create a DCRug Telegram bot
Bots are third-party apps that run
inside Telegram.
Our Rails app controls the bot,
providing the content, managing
subscribers, interactions, and
broadcasts.
Our bot will send DCRug event listings
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3. Create a DCRug Telegram bot
Start by using a bot to create your bot
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4. Now that DCRug bot is created,
how do we communicate with it?
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5. With bots, we can have 2 types of communication:
1. Subscriber initiated
2. Bot (Rails app) initiated
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6. Subscriber initiated communication
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7. Bot (Rails app) initiated communication
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8. Capture real-time Telegram bot events
Just for fun: first article on web hooks (may have coined term):
http://progrium.com/blog/2007/05/03/web-hooks-to-revolutionize-the-web/
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9. We will setup DCRug bot with a webhook, and use
ngrok to create a secure tunnel to my dev machine
and to inspect the webhook payload
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10. 10

11. Setup dev machine to accept webhooks from
Telegram with ngrok
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12. If you have Telegram installed, please subscribe
Via browser: http://telegram.me/DCRug_bot
Via Telegram: go into “Chats” and search for DCRug
(please call out if this isn’t working for you)
secret command /count provides number of subscribers
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13. What just happened?
Our bot (Rails app!):
• intercepted a webhook
• extracted the bot command
• created a subscriber in the database
• sent a response to the new subscriber
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14. Intercept a webhook
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15. Extract bot command from webhook payload
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16. Create a subscriber in the database
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17. Send response to the new subscriber
use telegram-bot-ruby gem to wrap and simplify Telegram API
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18. 18
Pop Quiz!
how can we broadcast DCRug events,
right now, to all active subscribers?

19. Broadcast DCRug events to all subscribers
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20. The End
Questions, comments, thoughts?
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(See me after the meeting for an example of another very different bot if interested, it
enables searches across 2 websites and a database of tweets going back 6 years)

21. A bot serving a small
educational non-profit
https://telegram.me/VaxCalc_bot
Searches a database of more than 1,100 “foundational
knowledge” tweets produced since 2010
Combines results with custom Google search of 2
content-heavy websites with articles going back 30 years
good search: allergy
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(to be fixed) Subscribers receive 4:10 pm notification of “trending” tweet past 24 hours