Telegram Bot Suggest News

This project is a Telegram bot that allows users to suggest news for a channel. The bot is built with Go using the telebot library and includes rate limiting functionality to prevent spam.

Features

• Users can suggest news to a Telegram channel.
• Rate limiting to prevent spam (configurable).
• Dockerized for easy deployment.

Prerequisites

• Go 1.17 or later
• Docker
• Docker Compose
• A Telegram bot token (You can create a bot and get the token from BotFather)
• Admin ID (Your Telegram user ID)

Variables

• ADMIN_ID - your personal ID in Telegram
• RATE_LIMIT - limit of message per time interval. For example, 5:60 allows users suggest 5 news per 1 minute (60s)
• TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN - telegram bot token

Hosting

You can run your news bot without buying some hosting. The trick is using github actions. For achive it follow these steps...

1. Create a new personal bot

Open https://t.me/botfather and create a new bot. Select a name and save bot token. Remember, one bot - one app - one channel. If you need this bot for 2 channels or more - follow steps from 1st till end for each telegram channels. Save token and open your Telegram Bot, than press Start. You will get nothing from already created bot, but it is ok, because you didn't run your application for catch requests.

2. Fork this repo

It will create your own copy of code and you might set and use your personal secrets and variables.

3. Set var TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN in repo

Follow settings/secrets/actions and add New repository secret and set TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN with token from step 1.

4. Build your bot app

Follow Actions page and enable actions. Open action Build and Push Image and press Run workflow for building your own instance of Telegram Bot. Wait until success finished.

5. First run

Follow Actions page and open action Hosting and press Run workflow for first run.

6. Get your ADMIN_ID

ADMIN_ID is your personal ID in telegram. But do not worry it is easy to know. Open bot in Telegram and write command /getid. You will get an ADMIN_ID.

7. Final setup and run

Follow settings/variables/actions and add New repository variable.

• ADMIN_ID - from previous step
• RATE_LIMIT - recommended value is 5:60. It allows 1 user send not more then 5 messages in 60 seconds. But it is up to you and you can set 0:0 for unlimited suggested news.

Now we need to restart our application. Follow Actions page and and press Run workflow again. It will cancel current run application and create a newone with all needed params.

8. Test

Open bot in telegram and send some message. You will receive a message back. So you can make post in Telegram Channel with link to your bot and PIN it!

Local Development

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/nrukavkov/telegram-bot-suggest-news.git
cd telegram-bot-suggest-news

2. Create a .env.local file

Create a .env.local file in the root of your project with the following content:

TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN=your_telegram_bot_token
ADMIN_ID=your_admin_id
RATE_LIMIT=5:60

3. Build and Run the Bot

go build -o telegram-bot-suggest-news
./telegram-bot-suggest-news