Telegram Expense Bot Save
A bot that helps you manage and track your daily expenses.
🤖 telegram-expense-bot
This is a bot for the Telegram messaging app using their bot platform. The code is open-source and consequently anybody could set up an own instance of the bot. To learn how to do so, see this section. The official hosted version is available as @ExpenseBot. To learn more about this bot, please refer to this blog article or just send the bot a message with the /help command.
What does it do?
This bot’s purpose is to help people manage their daily expenses and keep track of their financial situation. Users can add expenses from wherever they are using a few simple commands from within the chat and have an eye on how much they have spent in a month or a day. This obviates the need for confusing Excel spreadsheets or paper notes.
Initial setup
When you first start using the bot, please send it your current location as a message, so the bot is aware of your time zone and can handle dates properly for you.
How to host it myself?
Prerequisites
In order to host this bot on your own, you need a few things.
- Server to run the bot on (since the bot uses the long polling method to get updates instead of the web-hook one, you don't need HTTPS certificates or ports to be exposed)
- Node.js >= 20
- A MongoDB database (you can use mlab.com to get a free, hosted MongoDB)
- A bot token, which you get from registering a new bot to the @BotFather
Configuration
To configure your bot, clone this repository, copy config.example.json to config.json and edit it.
| Property | Default | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
BOT_TOKEN |
- |
Yes | Your bot's token (received from BotFather). |
PUBLIC_URL |
- |
Webhook only | URL at which your bot is publicly available (for Telegram to send updates). Required in webhook mode. Ex.: https://bot.example.org. |
DB_URL |
- |
Yes | MongoDB database connection string (starting with mongodb://) |
DB_COLLECTION |
expenses |
No | MongoDB collection for storing expenses |
BIND_IPV4 |
127.0.0.1 |
Webhook only | Address where to listen for HTTP requests |
PORT |
3010 |
Webhook only | Port where to listen for HTTP requests |
BOT_NAME |
`` | Yes | The bot's name |
BOT_TELEGRAM_USERNAME |
`` | Yes | The bot's actual unique Telegram username |
ADMIN |
[] |
Yes | List of Telegram user IDs to grant admin access |
RATE_LIMIT |
250 |
No | Maximum number of messages per hour per user |
Install
$ yarn
Run
$ yarn start:production
Metrics
When using webhook mode, Prometheus metrics are exposed at /metrics.
Database
db.expenses.createIndex({ "user": 1 }, { name: "idx_user" });
db.expenses.createIndex({ "user": 1, "isTemplate": 1, "timestamp": 1, "category": 1 }, { name: "idx_full_query" });
db.expenses.createIndex({ "isTemplate": 1, "user": 1 }, { name: "idx_template_user" });
db.expenses.createIndex({ "isTemplate": 1, "user": 1, "timestamp": 1 }, { name: "idx_template_user_time" });
db.expenses.createIndex({ "ref": 1 }, { name: "idx_ref" });
License
MIT @ Ferdinand Mütsch
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