R Wrapper Around the Telegram Bot API

R wrapper around the Telegram Bot API ( http://core.telegram.org/bots/api) to access Telegram's messaging facilities with ease (e.g. you send messages, images, files from R to your smartphone).

This package is an R wrapper around the Telegram Bot API.

It allows to send messages (text, Markdown, images, files) from R to your smartphone.

More infos on telegram's bot api can be found here and here.

How to install the package?

For the stable version:

install.packages('telegram')

For the development one:

devtools::install_github('lbraglia/telegram')

First time setup

First you have to talk to the botfather to create a new bot; answer few questions regarding bot's name and you're ready to go.

After you've done, the botfather returns a token (which has to be kept secret) that lets you handle your bot; we need this token when creating the bot object on the R side. Following Hadley's API guidelines it's unsafe to type the token just in the R script. It's better to use enviroment variables set in .Renviron file.

So let's say you have named your bot RBot (it's the first question you've answered to the botfather); then put the following line with your token in your .Renviron:

R_TELEGRAM_BOT_RBot=123123:asdasdasd

If you follow the suggested R_TELEGRAM_BOT_ prefix convention you'll be able to use the bot_token function (otherwise you'll have to get these variable from Sys.getenv).

After you've finished these steps restart R in order to have working environment variables.

How to connect R with Telegram

Now you should be able to obtain a connection to your bot with these commands:

library(telegram)
 
## Create the bot object
bot <- TGBot$new(token = bot_token('RBot'))
 
## Now check bot connection it should print some of your bot's data
bot$getMe()
 
## Now, on the phone, find and say something to your bot to start a chat
## (and obtain a chat id).
## ...
 
## Here, check what you have inserted
bot$getUpdates()
 
## You're interested in the message.chat.id variable: in order to set a
## default chat_id for the following commands (to ease typing)
bot$set_default_chat_id(123456789)

After a bit using the package, you'll probably want to set the chat_id to your user id (or more generally, have something like an addressbook to store users' ids). If you put this in your .Renviron:

R_TELEGRAM_USER_me=123456789

you'll be able to use the user_id function, eg like this:

bot$set_default_chat_id(user_id('me'))

Examples of methods currently implemented

Once you've followed the previous section, run the following commands and look at your phone.

## Send some messages..
bot$sendMessage('This is text')
## Markdown support for messages
md1 <- "*bold* _italic_ [r-project](http://r-project.org) "
md2 <- " try `x <- rnorm(100)` at the console ..."
## below left spaces just for github displaying (not needed in the .R src)
md3 <- "
you can have
    ``` 
    x <- runif(100)
    mean(x)
    ```
too
" 
bot$sendMessage(md1, parse_mode = 'markdown')
bot$sendMessage(md2, parse_mode = 'markdown')
bot$sendMessage(md3, parse_mode = 'markdown')
 
## Send a image/photo
png('test.png')
plot(rnorm(100))
dev.off()
bot$sendPhoto('test.png', caption = 'This is my awesome graph')
 
## Send a document (can be any file)
help(TGBot, help_type = 'pdf')
bot$sendDocument('TGBot.pdf')
 
## Forward a message
bot$forwardMessage(from_chat_id = 123456,
                   chat_id = 123456,
                   message_id = 35)
 
## Send a location
bot$sendLocation(44.699, 10.6297)
 
## Send a sticker
bot$sendSticker(system.file('r_logo.webp', package = 'telegram'))
 
## Send a video
library(animation)
saveVideo({
    set.seed(1)
    nmax <- 10
    ani.options(interval = 0.4, nmax = nmax)
    x <- c()
    for (i in 1:nmax){
        x <- c(x, rnorm(1))
        plot(cumsum(x), lty = 2, xlim = c(1, nmax), ylim = c(-5, 5))
        abline(h = 0, col = 'red')
    }
}, video.name = 'animation.mp4')
bot$sendVideo('animation.mp4')
 
## Send mp3 audio files
bot$sendAudio(system.file('audio_test.mp3', package = 'telegram'),
              performer = 'espeak (http://espeak.sf.net)')
 
## Send voice (opus encoded .ogg files)
bot$sendVoice(system.file('voice_test.ogg', package = 'telegram'))
 
## getUserProfilePhotos
bot$getUserProfilePhotos(user_id('me')) # <- alternatively, message.from.id variable in getUpdates
bot$getUserProfilePhotos(user_id('me'), destfile = 'me.png')
 
# getFile
bot$getFile('asdasdasdqweqweqwe-UdYAAgI', # <- file_id from getUserProfilePhotos
            'me_small.png')