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Introduction

This library provides a pure Python, asynchronous interface for the Telegram Bot API. It's compatible with Python versions 3.7+.

In addition to the pure API implementation, this library features a number of high-level classes to make the development of bots easy and straightforward. These classes are contained in the telegram.ext submodule.

A pure API implementation without telegram.ext is available as the standalone package python-telegram-bot-raw. See here for details.

Note

Installing both python-telegram-bot and python-telegram-bot-raw in conjunction will result in undesired side-effects, so only install one of both.

Telegram API support

All types and methods of the Telegram Bot API 6.1 are supported.

Installing

You can install or upgrade python-telegram-bot via

$ pip install python-telegram-bot --upgrade

To install a pre-release, use the --pre flag in addition.

You can also install python-telegram-bot from source, though this is usually not necessary.

$ git clone https://github.com/python-telegram-bot/python-telegram-bot
$ cd python-telegram-bot
$ python setup.py install

Dependencies & Their Versions

python-telegram-bot tries to use as few 3rd party dependencies as possible. However, for some features using a 3rd party library is more sane than implementing the functionality again. The dependencies are:

• httpx ~= 0.23.0 for telegram.request.HTTPXRequest, the default networking backend
• tornado~=6.1 for telegram.ext.Updater.start_webhook
• cachetools~=5.2.0 for telegram.ext.CallbackDataCache
• APScheduler~=3.9.1 for telegram.ext.JobQueue

python-telegram-bot is most useful when used along with additional libraries. To minimize dependency conflicts, we try to be liberal in terms of version requirements on the dependencies. On the other hand, we have to ensure stability of python-telegram-bot, which is why we do apply version bounds. If you encounter dependency conflicts due to these bounds, feel free to reach out.

Optional Dependencies

PTB can be installed with optional dependencies:

• pip install python-telegram-bot[passport] installs the cryptography>=3.0 library. Use this, if you want to use Telegram Passport related functionality.
• pip install python-telegram-bot[socks] installs httpx[socks]. Use this, if you want to work behind a Socks5 server.

Quick Start

Our Wiki contains an Introduction to the API explaining how the pure Bot API can be accessed via python-telegram-bot. Moreover, the Tutorial: Your first Bot gives an introduction on how chatbots can be easily programmed with the help of the telegram.ext module.

Resources

• The package documentation is the technical reference for python-telegram-bot. It contains descriptions of all available classes, modules, methods and arguments as well as the changelog.
• The wiki is home to number of more elaborate introductions of the different features of python-telegram-bot and other useful resources that go beyond the technical documentation.
• Our examples section contains several examples that showcase the different features of both the Bot API and python-telegram-bot. Even if it is not your approach for learning, please take a look at echobot.py. It is the de facto base for most of the bots out there. The code for these examples is released to the public domain, so you can start by grabbing the code and building on top of it.
• The official Telegram Bot API documentation is of course always worth a read.

Getting help

If the resources mentioned above don't answer your questions or simply overwhelm you, there are several ways of getting help.

1. We have a vibrant community of developers helping each other in our Telegram group. Join us! Asking a question here is often the quickest way to get a pointer in the right direction.
2. Ask questions by opening a discussion.
3. You can even ask for help on Stack Overflow using the python-telegram-bot tag.

Concurrency

Since v20.0, python-telegram-bot is built on top of Pythons asyncio module. Because asyncio is in general single-threaded, python-telegram-bot does currently not aim to be thread-safe. Noteworthy parts of python-telegram-bots API that are likely to cause issues (e.g. race conditions) when used in a multi-threaded setting include:

• telegram.ext.Application/Updater.update_queue
• telegram.ext.ConversationHandler.check/handle_update
• telegram.ext.CallbackDataCache
• telegram.ext.BasePersistence
• all classes in the telegram.ext.filters module that allow to add/remove allowed users/chats at runtime

Contributing

Contributions of all sizes are welcome. Please review our contribution guidelines to get started. You can also help by reporting bugs or feature requests.

Donating

Occasionally we are asked if we accept donations to support the development. While we appreciate the thought, maintaining PTB is our hobby, and we have almost no running costs for it. We therefore have nothing set up to accept donations. If you still want to donate, we kindly ask you to donate to another open source project/initiative of your choice instead.

License

You may copy, distribute and modify the software provided that modifications are described and licensed for free under LGPL-3. Derivatives works (including modifications or anything statically linked to the library) can only be redistributed under LGPL-3, but applications that use the library don't have to be.