I’m building a Telegram bot for an online shop using PHP and Laravel. The bot lets customers buy products and also register as resellers. I’m stuck on the reseller registration process.
To become a reseller, users need to:
Make a crypto wallet
Sign up on our website
Buy something from us
Fill out a form
There’s a button in the bot that shows 4 inline buttons for these steps. When a user taps a button, they get instructions and a ‘validate’ button.
I want the bot to check the user’s input after they hit ‘validate’. But I can’t figure out how to grab what the user types next.
I’ve tried using callback queries, but I’m lost. Any ideas on how to capture and validate user responses in this flow?
I’m using the telegram-bot-sdk library. Thanks for any help!
As someone who’s worked with Telegram bots, I can tell you that handling user input validation can be tricky. Here’s what I’ve found works well:
Use a state machine to track where each user is in the registration process. Store this in a database or Redis.
When a user hits ‘validate’, set a flag in their state indicating you’re waiting for input. Then, in your message handler, check for this flag.
If the flag is set, validate their input against the expected format for that step. Update their state based on whether it’s valid or not.
For the crypto wallet step, you might want to use a regex to validate the wallet address format. For the website signup, you could ping your API to check if the username exists.
Remember to handle timeouts - if a user doesn’t respond within a certain period, reset their state.
This approach has worked well for me in similar projects. Hope it helps!
Having worked on similar projects, I can suggest an approach that’s been effective for me. Instead of relying solely on callback queries, consider implementing a message handler to capture user input directly.
Set up your bot to listen for incoming messages after the ‘validate’ button is pressed. You can use a state machine to keep track of which step each user is on. Store this state in a database or cache.
When a user sends a message, check their current state and validate the input accordingly. For example, if they’re on the crypto wallet step, use a regex to verify the wallet address format. For website signup, query your API to confirm the account exists.
Remember to implement error handling and clear instructions for users. If validation fails, explain why and prompt them to try again. Also, consider adding a timeout mechanism to reset the state if a user becomes inactive.
This approach allows for a more flexible and robust validation process. It’s served me well in past projects.