Blockchain

Building a Cryptocurrency Tracking Telegram Bot with Python

Telegram bots are accounts operated by software that serve as handy tools for many tasks. This article will go through what Telegram bots are, how to use them, and their development process in Python. We will also build a Telegram bot to track cryptocurrencies and send regular updates on prices to better understand them.

Introduction

Telegram is a trendy social media platform for messaging and privacy.

Its core functionalities include:

Sending messages to other Telegram users.
Calling contacts.
Sending files and stickers.
Creating group chats and channels.
Cloud backup

You can learn more about Telegram here.

Telegram bots are accounts that are operated by software.

They can do many things, including:

Teaching users.
Broadcasting messages.
Playing games.
Acting as search engines.
Serving as reminders.
Passing commands to Internet of Things (IoT) devices.
Connecting and integrating with other services.

@GroupButler_bot is a Telegram bot for managing Telegram groups.

telegram group butler

Cryptocurrencies are digital forms of currencies that exist in the cyber world. They are peer-to-peer and built upon blockchain technology, a distributed and decentralized ledger with no central authority. Popular cryptocurrencies include Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Doge, and Ripple.

Building a cryptocurrency tracker

Cryptocurrencies are volatile, so their prices change every second. There are also many cryptocurrencies in existence, and it can be troublesome to keep track of every one. A cryptocurrency tracker aggregates multiple coins' prices in a single place and updates itself as their prices change.

This article will build a cryptocurrency tracker by consuming data provided by CryptoCompare API using Python.

First, we need to install the Requests library, which extends Python programs' functionality by providing functions that allow them to make HTTP requests. Here, we will be using it to communicate with the CryptoCompare API.

In the terminal, type:

pip install requests

Second, we need to write the code responsible for sending requests to CryptoCompare to fetch the current prices of currencies we wish to track. CryptoCompare provides an endpoint that returns the data we require so that we will be consuming that.

Create a file named tracker.py and save the following code in it:

import requests


def get_prices():
    coins = ["BTC", "ETH", "XRP", "LTC", "BCH", "ADA", "DOT", "LINK", "BNB", "XLM"]

    crypto_data = requests.get(
        "https://min-api.cryptocompare.com/data/pricemultifull?fsyms={}&tsyms=USD".format(",".join(coins))).json()["RAW"]

    data = {}
    for i in crypto_data:
        data[i] = {
            "coin": i,
            "price": crypto_data[i]["USD"]["PRICE"],
            "change_day": crypto_data[i]["USD"]["CHANGEPCT24HOUR"],
            "change_hour": crypto_data[i]["USD"]["CHANGEPCTHOUR"]
        }

    return data


if __name__ == "__main__":
    print(get_prices())

This is the expected output from the code above when executed:

crypto tracker output

Building a Telegram bot

Step 1: Launch BotFather on Telegram

Search for @botfather on Telegram and launch the bot. BotFather is a bot that helps us create and manage Telegram bot interfaces.

telegram botfather

chatting with botfather

Step 2: Create a Telegram bot interface

To create a new bot with BotFather. First, use the /newbot command, that will trigger BotFather to ask you for the details of the bot you want to create.

create new bot

supply bot info

BotFather will give you the HTTP token after you have supplied the name and username for your bot. The token is used to build functionality for your bot via the Telegram API.

get bot token

Step 3: Connect to the Telegram API via Python

First, we will be installing a couple of Python libraries that will allow us to easily interact with the Telegram API. You can also refer to Telegram API documentation if you want to explore the full functionality of Telegram bots here.

In the terminal, type:

pip install telegram
pip install python_telegram_bot

Second, we need to write another Python script that will connect to the Telegram API and listen to messages sent to our bot then respond to them.

Create a file named bot.py and save the code below in it:

import telegram
from telegram.ext import Updater
from telegram.ext import CommandHandler

telegram_bot_token = "your-telegram-token"

updater = Updater(token=telegram_bot_token, use_context=True)
dispatcher = updater.dispatcher


def start(update, context):
    chat_id = update.effective_chat.id
    context.bot.send_message(chat_id=chat_id, text="Hello World")


dispatcher.add_handler(CommandHandler("start", start))
updater.start_polling()

In the code above, we first used the updater class from the Telegram library to listen to new messages being sent to our bot and then a message handler with the dispatcher class.

Then, we created a command handler and assigned it to our dispatcher. A command handler is a block of code called when a bot user triggers a certain command.

Then, we used the send_message method provided by the Telegram library to send messages to our users when they expect a response. The method takes in a parameter called chat_id that is uniquely assigned to every Telegram user along with the message we want to send.

This is the expected response from our Telegram bot when the bot.py script is executed, and a message is sent to the bot (don’t forget to replace the placeholder with your API token):

find our bot

message our bot

Integrating cryptocurrency tracking to our bot

Now we have a script that tracks cryptocurrency prices and a Telegram bot that responds to messages sent to it. Let us build a Telegram bot that will fetch cryptocurrency data from CryptoCompare and send it to users.

We need to update our bot.py file with the following code:

import telegram
from telegram.ext import Updater
from telegram.ext import CommandHandler
from tracker import get_prices

telegram_bot_token = "your-telegram-token"

updater = Updater(token=telegram_bot_token, use_context=True)
dispatcher = updater.dispatcher


def start(update, context):
    chat_id = update.effective_chat.id
    message = ""

    crypto_data = get_prices()
    for i in crypto_data:
        coin = crypto_data[i]["coin"]
        price = crypto_data[i]["price"]
        change_day = crypto_data[i]["change_day"]
        change_hour = crypto_data[i]["change_hour"]
        message += f"Coin: {coin}\nPrice: ${price:,.2f}\nHour Change: {change_hour:.3f}%\nDay Change: {change_day:.3f}%\n\n"

    context.bot.send_message(chat_id=chat_id, text=message)


dispatcher.add_handler(CommandHandler("start", start))
updater.start_polling()

This is the expected response from our Telegram bot when the bot.py script is executed, and a message is sent to the bot:

testing our bot

Conclusion

In this article, we learned what Telegram bots are and built our first Telegram bot. We also built a script to track cryptocurrency prices and integrated it into a Telegram bot to build a handy tool for us.

Looking to develop the Telegram bot further, improve the design or check out example code? Check out the GitHub Repo.

You can also access the bot built in this article here. I hope you find this tutorial on building telegram bots useful.