Deploy Telegram Bot (Pyrogram) on Back4App

Question

I just found Back4App free tier to test my lightweight apps, want to deploy a Telegram bot written with Pyrogram but didn't find any guide on the website for Python app deployment. How can I deploy my app? It doesn't have a database and has only two files main.py and bot.session; also I don't know if I need to set webhook or not. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I'm sure you've already figured it out, but if somebody else wants to know:

First of all, back4app uses (at least now) Docker images to deploy your app. There are simple instructions on the site: https://www.back4app.com/docs-containers/integrate-with-github

Long story short: You need to put your project on GitHub, then integrate it with b4a, then create a Dockerfile* and put it in your project and then pick this project here: https://containers.back4app.com/apps

If you've done everything correctly, your bot will function perfectly. But even if your deployment failed, your bot might still work.

Here is a simplified Dockerfile that is 100% functional:

# Choosing an image for you container.
FROM python:3.11.0
# Setting your working directory
WORKDIR /EXAMPLE
# This command would copy EVERY FILE from your project folder into your container, so be careful.
COPY . .
# Installing needed packages and dependencies.**
RUN pip install -r requirements.txt
# This command basically executes your main file with Python.
CMD ["python", "FILENAME.py"]
# Setting a port for your app communications with Telegram servers.
EXPOSE 80/tcp

There is one thing that's need mentioning. If you will use my Dockerfile, back4app would say that deployment failed with this error: "It looks that no process is listening to the 80 port using http". But your bot would still function (if your code does work).

I can't tell how to get rid of that error, but if you need a working app, you could try to solve this mistery later by yourself.

Quote from official Telegram website. "The TCP transport is implemented simply by sending the payloads generated by the chosen MTProto transport over a plain TCP socket on ports 80, 443, 5222 or other (a different port number may be returned by help.getConfig)": https://core.telegram.org/mtproto/transports

*Dockerfile is a file withont extention named "Dockerfile", which containes commands to build your Docker container.

**If you don't know how to create a requirements.txt file, check this link: https://packaging.python.org/en/latest/guides/installing-using-pip-and-virtual-environments/

Long story short: If you don't want to put EVERY package you have on your computer in your Docker contaner, use virtual invironment to install only needed ones and then use this command:

py -m pip freeze > requirements.txt