.. _configuring-telegram-bot: How do I configure a Telegram bot for Spidermon? ================================================ What are bots? -------------- A bot is a type of Telegram user designed to interact with users via conversation. To work with :doc:`Telegram Actions `, you will need a Telegram bot which would send notifications to Telegram from Spidermon. Steps ----- #. `Create a Telegram bot `_. #. Once your bot is created, you will receive its Authorization Token. This `Bot Authorization Token` is what we use for ``SPIDERMON_TELEGRAM_SENDER_TOKEN``. #. Add your Telegram bot credentials to your Scrapy project's settings. #. Add the recipients to your Scrapy project's settings, getting the `chat_id` or `group_id` is not straightforward, there is an info bot that can help with this. Just forward a message from the user or group that you want to receive Spidermon notifications to `[@GroupIDbot](https://t.me/GroupIDbot)` and it will reply with the id. To forward a message from a group to the bot, you need to add the bot to that group before. #. For notifications in groups: `Add your self-created bot `_ (from step 1.) to your group. For notifications in channels: Add your self-created bot (from step 1.) as administrator to your channel (not possible in browser version). .. note: You need to add the bot to the group or channel so it can send messages. If you want the bot to send notifications to a user, first the user needs to start a conversation with the bot and send the command `/start`. .. code-block:: python # settings.py SPIDERMON_TELEGRAM_SENDER_TOKEN = 'YOUR_BOT_AUTHORIZATION_TOKEN' SPIDERMON_TELEGRAM_RECIPIENTS = ['chat_id', 'group_id', '@channelname']