sendtg

Sending Telegram messages from R made easy!

This package contains wrapper functions built on the telegram.bot package to easily send Telegram messages using R. The primary motivation for this package was to create a simple tool to send notifications when scripts finish running, similar to the beepr.

The primary motivation for this package was to generate notifications when "medium-long" R scripts would finish to optimize the user's time i.e. coffee breaks :coffee: :running:

Installation

To install the package, use:

devtools::install_github("eugejoh/sendtg")

library(sendtg)

Resources

I suggest reading a bit on the security regarding Telegram and you can gauge whether this is relevant to you or not. I've run into issues where some IT firewalls will block R from sending Telegram messages.

To get started you can check out the very useful tutorials based on the telegram.bot package on getting started and other features here.

If you're curious more about the Telegram API and bots, you can read more on their website.

Getting Started

First you'll need to create a Telegram account. Then you'll need to talk to the @BotFather to create a new bot. You can find the steps here at the Telegram website.

This package contains two useful packages to help you get started, sendtg_setup() and sendtg_check. The first function sendtg_setup() outlines the basic steps to setup the bot token. It uses the usethis package to open your .Renviron file so you can safely store the API token. It's bad practice to put credentials or keys in R scripts, its better to place them in the .Renviron file. You can read more here and here.

sendtg_setup()

#> 1. Follow the instructions to setup a Telegram bot: https://core.telegram.org/bots#6-botfather
#>
#> 2. Add the token to your .Renviron file using the following lines R_TELEGRAM_BOT_RTelegramBot = TOKEN
#>
#> example: R_TELEGRAM_BOT_RTelegramBot = 110201543:AAHdqTcvCH1vGWJxfSeofSAs0K5PALDsaw
#>
#> ● Modify '/Users/eugenejoh/.Renviron'
#> ● Restart R for changes to take effect
#>
#> 3. Restart your R session and run `sendtg_check`

The second function sendtg_check() checks whether you setup the token correctly in your .Renviron file and whether you can get chatid for your newly created Telegram bot. If everything is good you should get a similar output below (with your information obviously).

sendtg_check()

#> $id
#> [1] 845078134
#>
#> #is_bot
#> [1] TRUE
#>
#> $first_name
#> [1] "My bot's name"
#>
#> $username
#> [1] "the_name_I_used_bot"

Sending A Message

Now that you're setup and ready to send yourself Telegram messages using R, you can use one of three functions: sendtg_msg, sendtg_img, and sendtg_file. The names are fairly self descriptive - they send either a message, an image, or a file respectively. Just remember not to send sensitive information or files through this method!

library(dplyr)
library(readr)
data(iris)

iris_summary <- iris %>% 
  group_by(Species) %>% 
  summarise_at(.vars = vars(matches("Width$")), .funs = list(mean=mean, median=median))
sendtg_msg("I just finished processing iris data, see the attachement!")

readr::write_csv(x = iris_summary, path = "some_cool_output.csv")
sendtg_file("some_cool_output.csv")

Summary

This package is meant to make the Telegram API simple for R users to incorporate notifications into their R scripts. If you're interested in learning more about using R with the Telegram API, I strongly suggest checking out Ernest Benedito's package telegram.bot package.

Hopefully you can go on your coffee breaks or afternoon walks without wondering if your script finished running! :walking: :coffee: