Bashbot - A Telegram bot written in bash.

Written by Drew (@topkecleon), Daniil Gentili (@danogentili), and Kay M (@gnadelwartz).

Contributions by JuanPotato, BigNerd95, TiagoDanin, and iicc1.

Released to the public domain wherever applicable. Elsewhere, consider it released under the WTFPLv2.

Prerequisites

Uses JSON.sh, but no more TMUX.

Even bashbot is written in bash, it depends on commands typically availible in a Unix/Linux Environment. More concret on the common commands provided by coreutils, busybox or toybox, see Developer Notes

Bashbot Documentation and Downloads are availible on www.github.com

Documentation

• Introdution to Telegram Bots
  • One Bot to rule them all
  • Bot commands
• Install Bashbot
  • Install release
  • Install from githup
  • Update Bashbot
  • Notes on Updates
• Create a new Telegram Bot with botfather
• Getting Started
  • Managing your Bot
  • Recieve data
  • Send messages
  • Send files, locations, keyboards
• Advanced Features
  • Access Control
  • Interactive Chats
  • Background Jobs
  • Inline queries
• Expert Use
  • Handling UTF-8 character sets
  • Run as other user or system service
  • Scedule bashbot from Cron
• Best Practices
  • Customize commands.sh
  • Seperate logic from commands
  • Test your Bot with shellcheck
• Function Reference
  • Sending Messages, Files, Keyboards
  • User Access Control
  • Inline Queries
  • Background and Interactive Jobs
• Deveoper Notess
  • Setup your environment
  • Test, Add, Push changes
  • Prepare a new version
  • Bashbot testsuite
• Customize bashbot environment
• Examples

Your really first bashbot in a nutshell

To install an run bashbot you need acess to a linux/unix/bsd etc. command line. All linux/unix/bsd systems has the comamnds to run bashbot installed if bash is availible. If you don't know how to get accces to a linux/unix/bsd like command line you should stop reading here :-(

In addition you need a Telegram client and an a mobile phone to register an account. If you don't want to install and register for Telegram you should stop reading here ;-)

After you are registered to telegram open a chat with @botfather to create a new Telegram Bot token. Write down the bot token you get from botfather, you need it while installing the bot.

Now open the linux/unix/bsd command line and check if bash is installed by running which bash && echo "bash installed!". If you get an error message conatct you system administrator to install bash.

Create a new, empty drirectory and change to it, e.g. mkdir tbb; cd tbb, and download the '*.tar.gz' file from the lastest bashbot release from https://github.com/topkecleon/telegram-bot-bash/releases an copy it to the new directory. This can be done with the following command:

wget -q https://github.com/$(wget -q https://github.com/topkecleon/telegram-bot-bash/releases/latest -O - | egrep '/.*/.*/.*tar.gz' -o)

To install bashbot extract thew archive an change to bashbot directory by running tar -xzf *.tar.gz; cd telegram-bot-bash, install bashbot with the command ./bashbot.sh init and enter your bot token when asked. All other questions can be answered by hitting the key.

Thats all, now you can start your bot with ./bashbot.sh start and send him messages:

/start

You are Botadmin
*Available commands*:
*• /start*: _Start bot and get this message_.
*• /help*: _Get this message_.
*• /info*: _Get shorter info message about this bot_....

/info

his is bashbot, the Telegram bot written entirely in bash.
It features background tasks and interactive chats, and can serve as an interface for CLI programs.

For more Information on how to install, customize and use your new bot, read the Documentation

---

Security Considerations

Running a Telegram Bot means it is connected to the public and you never know whats send to your Bot.

Bash scripts in general are not designed to be bullet proof, so consider this Bot as a proof of concept. Bash programmers often struggle with 'quoting hell' and globbing, see Implications of wrong quoting

Whenever you are processing input from from untrusted sources (messages, files, network) you must be as carefull as possible, e.g. set IFS appropriate, disable globbing (set -f) and quote everthing. In addition delete unused scripts and examples from your Bot, e.g. scripts 'notify', 'calc', 'question', and disable all not used commands.

A powerful tool to improve your scripts is shellcheck. You can use it online or install shellcheck locally. Shellcheck is used extensive in bashbot development to enshure a high code quality, e.g. it's not allowed to push changes without passing all shellcheck tests. In addition bashbot has a test suite to check if important functionality is working as expected.

Run your Bot as a restricted user

I recommend to run your bot as a user, with almost no access rights. All files your Bot have write access to are in danger to be overwritten/deleted if your bot is hacked. For the same reason ervery file your Bot can read is in danger to be disclosed. Restict your Bots access rigths to the absolute minimum.

Never run your Bot as root, this is the most dangerous you can do! Usually the user 'nobody' has almost no rights on Unix/Linux systems. See Expert use on how to run your Bot as an other user.

Secure your Bot installation

Your Bot configuration must no be readable from other users. Everyone who can read your Bots token can act as your Bot and has access to all chats your Bot is in!

Everyone with read access to your Bot files can extract your Bots data. Especially your Bot Token in token must be protected against other users. No one exept you must have write access to the Bot files. The Bot must be restricted to have write access to count and tmp-bot-bash only, all other files must be write protected.

To set access rights for your bashbot installation to a reasonable default run sudo ./bashbot.sh init after every update or change to your installation directory.

FAQ

Is this Bot insecure?

Bashbot is not more (in)secure as any other Bot written in any other language, we have done our best to make it as secure as possible. But YOU are responsible for the bot commands you wrote and you should know about the risks ...

Why Bash and not the much better xyz?

Well, thats a damn good question ... may be because I'm an Unix/Linux admin from stone age. Nevertheless there are more reasons from my side:

• bashbot will run everywhere where bash is availible, from ebedded linux to mainframe
• easy to integrate with other shell script, e.g. for sending system message / health status
• no need to install or learn a new programming language, library or framework
• no database, not event driven, not OO ...

Can I have the single bashbot.sh file back?

At the beginning bashbot was simply the file bashbot.sh you can copy everywhere and run the bot. Now we have 'commands.sh', 'mycommands.sh', 'modules/*.sh' and much more.

Hey no Problem, if you are finished with your cool bot run dev/make-standalone.sh to create a stripped down Version of your bot containing only 'bashbot.sh' and 'commands.sh'! For more information see Create a stripped down Version of your Bot

@Gnadelwartz

That's it!

If you feel that there's something missing or if you found a bug, feel free to submit a pull request!

$$VERSION$$ v0.80-0-g5bce3f7