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Auto Chat Action plugin for grammY

This plugin provides a middleware to automatically send an appropriate chat action.
For example sends the “sending video” chat action when sendVideo is called.

Installation

Node

npm i @grammyjs/auto-chat-action

Deno

import { autoChatAction } from "https://deno.land/x/grammy_auto_chat_action/mod.ts";

Install plugin

import {
  autoChatAction,
  AutoChatActionFlavor,
} from "@grammyjs/auto-chat-action";

// Extend the context
const bot = new Bot<Context & AutoChatActionFlavor>("");

// Install the plugin
bot.use(autoChatAction());

Usage

import { Bot, Context } from "grammy";
import {
  autoChatAction,
  AutoChatActionFlavor,
} from "@grammyjs/auto-chat-action";

type MyContext = Context & AutoChatActionFlavor;

// Create a bot.
const bot = new Bot<MyContext>("token");

// Install the plugin
bot.use(autoChatAction());

bot.command("start", (ctx) => {
  // Starts sending "typing" chat action in a loop
  ctx.chatAction = "typing";

  // Some long-running operations...

  return ctx.reply("42!");
});

bot.command("photo", (ctx) => {
  // Sending the "upload_photo" chat action until the media is uploaded
  return ctx.replyWithPhoto(
    new InputFile("/tmp/picture.jpg"),
  );
});

bot.start();

Automatic Action Sending

Automatic sending of a chat action starts under the following conditions:

  1. Request method from the list:
    • sendPhoto
    • sendAudio
    • sendDocument
    • sendVideo
    • sendAnimation
    • sendVoice
    • sendVideoNote
    • sendSticker
    • sendMediaGroup
  2. Request payload contains InputFile
  3. Request payload contains a chat ID.

Sending of a chat action stops under one of the following conditions:

  1. Update processing is complete.
  2. Request which requires the chat action is complete.
  3. sendChatAction request caused an error.

Manual Action Sending

Sending chat action with context

// Set the action to be sent until the update is processed
ctx.chatAction = "typing";

// To stop sending, simply set the chat action to null
ctx.chatAction = null;

// You can change the chat action during update processing
ctx.chatAction = "choose_sticker";

Sending other requests that require sending a chat action will interrupt the sending of the current chat action.

ctx.chatAction = "typing";

await ctx.reply("Hi!");

// Sends "upload_photo" while file is uploading
await ctx.replyWithPhoto(
  new InputFile("/tmp/kitten.png"),
);

// Now there is no sending chat action
// ctx.chatAction is null

Sending chat action with middleware

import { chatAction } from "@grammyjs/auto-chat-action";

bot.command("start", chatAction("typing"), (ctx) => {
  // Some long-running operations...

  return ctx.reply("42!");
});

Using with Conversations

You need to pass the chat action controller explicitly to use the plugin with conversations. It is important that the controller is the same.

import { createChatActionsController } from "@grammyjs/auto-chat-action";

// 1. Create chat actions controller
const chatActionsController = createChatActionsController(bot.api);

// 2. Pass controller to the plugin
bot.use(autoChatAction(chatActionsController));

async function greeting(conversation: Conversation<Context>, ctx: Context) {
  // 3. Pass controller to the plugin inside conversation
  await conversation.run(autoChatAction(chatActionsController));

  ctx.chatAction = "typing";
  await ctx.reply("Hi there! What is your name?");

  const { message } = await conversation.wait();
  ctx.chatAction = "typing";
  await ctx.reply(`Welcome to the chat, ${message.text}!`);
}