Telegram Bots 101
A Telegram bot is a special user account controlled by your server program. Bots can chat with users, respond to commands, send media, and participate in groups and channels.
Bots have some limitations compared to real users—mostly for privacy protection. For instance, bots can't join groups on their own and must be invited by users.
How to program a bot
Here is a short answer:
- Register a bot.
- Pick a library for your favorite programming language.
- Use the library docs and this book to write the code.
While you can run the bot program on your computer during development, you'll want to deploy it to a hosting service when the code is ready for production.
All these steps are covered in detail further in the “Development” chapter.