How to Design Movie Telegram Bot using Node.js ?

Last Updated : 02 Nov, 2020

Telegram bot API can be used to create a chatbot that returns the complete details of movies, web series, and Tv series by sending the name of the movie or series as a command. Telegram provides a bunch of API’s methods to perform different functions. The telegram bot can be used to know the complete details of the movie without going to other websites like the IMDb site, etc.

Prerequisites:

Knowledge of Javascript and setting up a node environment.
The latest version of Node (version > 10)
The latest version of npm (version > 6)

Command to check if Node and npm are present in your system:

$ npm --v
6.14.5

$ node --version
v10.15.0

Creating Bot and Getting API Token:

Open the telegram app and search for @BotFather.
Click on the start button or send “/start”.
Then send “/newbot” message to set up a name and a username.
The BotFather will then give you an API token.

Getting Movie API Key:

Go to the OMDB (open movie database ) website.
Create an account as per the limit.
You will receive your own API key.

Modules Installation:

Requests: To install this module type the below command in the terminal.

$ npm install --save requests

node-telegram-bot-api: Node.js module to interact with the official Telegram Bot API.

$ npm install node-telegram-bot-api

Filename: bot.js

javascript

// Requiring module
var reques = require('requests')
var TelegramBot = require('node-telegram-bot-api')
token = "YOUR-TELEGRAM_API-TOKEN"
movieapi = "YOUR-OMDB_API-TOKEN"

// Create a bot that uses 'polling' 
// to fetch new updates
var bot = new TelegramBot(token, { polling: true });

bot.on("polling_error", (err) => console.log(err));

bot.onText(/\/movie (.+)/, function (msg, match) {

    // The 'msg' is the received Message from
    // user and 'match' is the result of 
    // execution above on the text content

    // Getting the name of movie from the 
    // message sent to bot
    var movie = match[1];
    var chatId = msg.chat.id

    reques('http://www.omdbapi.com/?t=' 
        + movie + '&apikey=movieapi',
        function (error, response, body) {
            if (!error && response.statusCode == 200) {
                bot.sendMessage(chatId, 
                    '_Looking for_ ' + movie + '...', 
                    { parse_mode: "Markdown" }).then(msg) {
                    res = JSON.parse(body)

                    bot.sendPhoto(chatId, res.Poster, {
                        caption: 'Result:\nTitle: ' 
                            + res.Title + '\nGenre: ' 
                            + res.Genre + '\nRated: ' 
                            + res.Rated + '  \nReleased: ' 
                            + res.Released
                    })

                    // Sending back response from the 
                    // bot to the user 
                    // Response has many other details, 
                    // which can be used or sent as per 
                    // requirement
                }
            }
        })
})