Duty Teller (Telegram Bot)

A minimal Telegram bot boilerplate using python-telegram-bot v22 with the Application API.

Get a bot token

1. Open Telegram and search for @BotFather.
2. Send /newbot and follow the prompts to create a bot.
3. Copy the token BotFather gives you.

Setup

1. Clone and enter the project

   cd duty-teller
   

2. Create a virtual environment (recommended)

   python -m venv venv
   source venv/bin/activate   # Linux/macOS
   # or: venv\Scripts\activate  # Windows
   

3. Install dependencies

   pip install -r requirements.txt
   

4. Configure the bot

   cp .env.example .env
   

   Edit .env and set BOT_TOKEN to the token from BotFather.

5. Miniapp access (calendar)
   To allow access to the calendar miniapp, set ALLOWED_USERNAMES to a comma-separated list of Telegram usernames (without @). Users in ADMIN_USERNAMES also have access; the admin role is reserved for future bot commands and API features. If both are empty, no one can open the calendar.

Run

python main.py

The bot runs in polling mode. Send /start or /help to your bot in Telegram to test.

Run with Docker

Ensure .env exists (e.g. cp .env.example .env) and contains BOT_TOKEN.

• Dev (volume mount; code changes apply without rebuild):

  docker compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml up --build
  

  Stop with Ctrl+C or docker compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml down.

• Prod (no volume; runs the built image; restarts on failure):

  docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml up -d --build
  

  For production deployments you may use Docker secrets or your orchestrator’s env instead of a .env file.

Project layout

• main.py – Builds the Application, registers handlers, runs polling.
• config.py – Loads BOT_TOKEN, ALLOWED_USERNAMES, ADMIN_USERNAMES from env; exits if BOT_TOKEN is missing.
• handlers/ – Command and error handlers; add new handlers here.
• requirements.txt – Pinned dependencies (PTB with job-queue, python-dotenv).

To add commands, define async handlers in handlers/commands.py (or a new module) and register them in handlers/__init__.py.