Skip to main content
Deno 2 is finally here 🎉️
Learn more

Tinygram

deno doc npm bundlephobia changelog

Tiny Telegram Bot API client library with TypeScript types.

Automatically generated from telegram-bot-api-spec.

Usage

Import in Node.js:

import { initTgBot } from "tinygram";

Import in Deno:

import { initTgBot } from "https://deno.land/x/tinygram/mod.ts";

Initialize the bot:

const botToken = "YOUR_BOT_TOKEN";
const tgBot = initTgBot({ botToken });

Call the API:

const botUser = await tgBot.getMe();
console.log(botUser.username);

Get updates:

for await (const update of tgBot.listUpdates({ timeout: 10 })) {
  console.log(update);
}

Download a file:

const botUser = await tgBot.getMe();
const botPhoto = await tgBot.getUserProfilePhotos({ user_id: botUser.id });
const botPhotoFileId = botPhoto.photos[0]?.[0]?.file_id;
const botPhotoFile = await tgBot.getFile({ file_id: botPhotoFileId });
const botPhotoBlob = await tgBot.getFileData(botPhotoFile.file_path);

// Save to file
await writeFile("bot.jpg", botPhotoBlob.stream());
// Set as img src
img.src = URL.createObjectURL(botPhotoBlob);

Example - Echo bot:

for await (const update of tgBot.listUpdates({ timeout: 10 })) {
  if (update.message) {
    const message = update.message;
    if (message.chat.type === "private" && message.text) {
      console.log(`Received message from ${message.from.first_name}: ${message.text}`);
      await tgBot.sendMessage({ chat_id: message.chat.id, text: message.text });
    }
  }
}

Auto-abort all requests after a timeout by default:

const tgBot = initTgBot({
  botToken: "YOUR_BOT_TOKEN",
  fetch: (url, init) => fetch(url, { ...init, signal: init.signal ?? AbortSignal.timeout(10_000) }),
});

FAQ

fetch is not a function

If you’re using Node.js without fetch support, you need to polyfill it or pass a custom fetch as an argument.

import fetch from "node-fetch";

const tgBot = initTgBot({ token: "YOUR_BOT_TOKEN", fetch });

If you’re sending files, you need FormData too.

import fetch, { FormData } from "node-fetch";

const tgBot = initTgBot({ token: "YOUR_BOT_TOKEN", fetch, FormData });

Must use import to load ES Module

The library is only available as a module. If you’re using CommonJS, you must import it using dynamic import:

const { initTgBot } = await import("tinygram");

Proxy is not defined

This library requires Proxy support, because the bot instance is actually a proxy.