dj-telegram-bot 0.1.3

The fastest way to build a production-ready Telegram bot on Django

Django Telegram Bot

The fastest way to build a production-ready Telegram bot on Django.

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🚀 Overview

dj_telegram_bot gives you a clean, decorator-based way to handle Telegram updates (commands, messages, callbacks) inside any Django project.

• Fully typed with Pydantic — every Telegram API type is modeled, giving you autocomplete and type safety everywhere
• Dynamic messages and keyboards — create and edit them directly from a custom Django admin UI
• Built-in @sponsor_required decorator — force users to join one or more channels (configured in the django-admin)
• Update mode — pause the bot and show a custom message (configured in the django-admin)
• Proxy (SOCKS5) support — for connecting to Telegram's official API (api.telegram.org) through a proxy, if needed.

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⚙️ Installation

pip install dj_telegram_bot

or with uv:

uv add dj_telegram_bot

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⚡ Quick Start

Here's the minimal setup to get a bot responding to /start.

1. Add the app and configure settings

# settings.py
INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    "dj_telegram_bot.contrib",
]

BOT_TOKEN = "your-telegram-bot-token"
TM_WEBHOOK_URL = "https://api.telegram.org"  # or your local Bot API server (TDLib)

2. Provide a User model

You must have a user model that inherits from AbstractUser and TelegramUserMixin, which automatically gives you the user_id and step fields:

# your_app/models.py
from django.contrib.auth.models import AbstractUser
from dj_telegram_bot.contrib.mixins import TelegramUserMixin

class User(AbstractUser, TelegramUserMixin):
    pass

# settings.py
AUTH_USER_MODEL = "your_app.User"

You can add any additional fields you need to this model.

3. Include the URLs and run migrations

# urls.py
from django.urls import path, include

urlpatterns = [
    ...
    path("telegram/", include("dj_telegram_bot.contrib.urls")),
]

python manage.py migrate

4. Set the webhook

Telegram needs to know where to send updates. Call setWebhook, pointing it at the /telegram/webhook/ path from step 3:

# Official Telegram API (api.telegram.org)
https://api.telegram.org/bot<BOT_TOKEN>/setWebhook?url=https://yourdomain.com/telegram/webhook/

# Local Bot API server (TDLib)
http://127.0.0.1:8081/bot<BOT_TOKEN>/setWebhook?url=http://127.0.0.1:8000/telegram/webhook/

Replace <BOT_TOKEN> with your bot token. For the url param: if you're using the official Telegram API server, set it to your own public domain; if you're using a local Bot API server (TDLib), set it to your django local ip:port.

5. Write a handler

Create a bot_handlers/ directory inside any of your Django apps — anything you put here is auto-discovered:

your_app/
├── bot_handlers/
│   └── start.py

# your_app/bot_handlers/start.py
from dj_telegram_bot.core.handlers import CommandHandler

class StartHandler(CommandHandler):
    @CommandHandler.register("start")
    def start(self):
        self.bot.send_message(chat_id=self.chat_id, text="Hello!")

That's it — your bot now replies to /start. Keep reading for the full setup.

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🛠 Full Setup

Settings reference

Setting	Required	Description
BOT_TOKEN	Yes	Bot token obtained from BotFather.
TM_WEBHOOK_URL	Yes	Base URL for the Telegram Bot API — use https://api.telegram.org or your local Bot API server.
PROXY_SOCKS	No	SOCKS5 proxy address (IP:PORT) for connecting to Telegram.

Where to put your handlers

The standard, recommended way is the bot_handlers/ directory shown in Quick Start. If you'd rather keep your handlers somewhere else (e.g. inside an existing views.py), that's fine too — but that module needs to be imported manually somewhere Django will load it, otherwise the decorators inside it never run. The cleanest place to do this is your app's apps.py:

# your_app/apps.py
from django.apps import AppConfig

class YourAppConfig(AppConfig):
    name = "your_app"

    def ready(self):
        from . import views  # wherever your handlers live

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📝 Usage

Messages & keyboards managed from the admin

Instead of hardcoding text and keyboards, define them in the Django admin (Messages section) and fetch them by step. First create a Message in the admin with a step value (e.g. "home"), then reference it in your handler:

from dj_telegram_bot.core.handlers import CommandHandler
from dj_telegram_bot.core.keyboard import KeyboardBuilder
from dj_telegram_bot.contrib.services import MessageService

class HomeHandler(CommandHandler):
    @CommandHandler.register("start")
    def start(self):
        msg = MessageService.get_msg_by_step("home")
        markup = KeyboardBuilder(msg).build()
        self.bot.send_message(chat_id=self.chat_id, text=msg.text, reply_markup=markup)

Each Message can have an associated Keyboard (reply or inline), with fully configurable Button rows/columns/data — all editable from the admin panel.

Requiring channel membership before access

Use the @sponsor_required decorator to require users to join specific channels before a handler runs. Channels are configured via the ChannelSponsor model in the admin panel.

from dj_telegram_bot.core.handlers import CommandHandler
from dj_telegram_bot.contrib.decorators import sponsor_required

class GatedHandler(CommandHandler):
    @CommandHandler.register("start")
    @sponsor_required
    def start(self):
        ...

If the user hasn't joined the required channels, they'll automatically receive a prompt with join links and a confirmation button — your handler only runs after they've joined.

Bot maintenance mode

Set BotUpdateStatus.is_update to True (via the admin panel or BotStatusService.set_updating(True)) to pause all update processing — useful during deployments or maintenance.