error on help command (and workaround)

Hello,

I’ve encountered the same problem as #41. I almost gave up on the idea to make hubot work with telegram but accidentally found a workaround.

If the bot name has an underscore in it, then the help command doesn’t work (but all other commands work fine). See the debug log below.

All Telegram bots have _bot in the end of their names. Also if you want to address the bot in the group chat, its (hubot) name must be the same as Telegram bot name. And here is the problem, underscore characters in the name makes the help command fail.

The workaround I found is to have the (hubot) name without underscore and provide a convenient alias for addressing the bot from the chat. For example, use / character as alias, start the hubot like this

bin/hubot -a telegram -l /

and in the group chat type /command instead of @botname command

I hope this helps.

My setup:

• clean Ubuntu 16.04 virtual machine

vagrant@u1604:~/gttest003_bot$ uname -a
Linux u1604 4.4.0-21-generic #37-Ubuntu SMP Mon Apr 18 18:33:37 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
vagrant@u1604:~/gttest003_bot$ node --version
v6.9.1
vagrant@u1604:~/gttest003_bot$ npm --version
3.10.8

• brand new bot, name of the bot is “gttest003_bot”

Debug log showing unsuccessful help and successful ping commands:

vagrant@u1604:~/gttest003_bot$ HUBOT_LOG_LEVEL="debug" TELEGRAM_TOKEN=XXX bin/hubot -a telegram
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:36:46 GMT+0000 (UTC)] DEBUG Loading adapter telegram
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:36:47 GMT+0000 (UTC)] INFO Telegram Adapter Bot XXX Loaded...
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:36:47 GMT+0000 (UTC)] INFO Telegram Adapter Started...
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:36:47 GMT+0000 (UTC)] DEBUG Loading scripts from /home/vagrant/gttest003_bot/scripts
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:36:47 GMT+0000 (UTC)] DEBUG Parsing help for /home/vagrant/gttest003_bot/scripts/example.coffee
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:36:47 GMT+0000 (UTC)] DEBUG Loading scripts from /home/vagrant/gttest003_bot/src/scripts
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:36:47 GMT+0000 (UTC)] DEBUG Loading hubot-scripts from /home/vagrant/gttest003_bot/node_modules/hubot-scripts/src/scripts
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:36:47 GMT+0000 (UTC)] WARNING Loading scripts from hubot-scripts.json is deprecated and will be removed in 3.0 (https://github.com/github/hubot-scripts/issues/1113) in favor of packages for each script.

Your hubot-scripts.json is empty, so you just need to remove it.
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:36:47 GMT+0000 (UTC)] DEBUG Loading external-scripts from npm packages
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:36:47 GMT+0000 (UTC)] DEBUG Parsing help for /home/vagrant/gttest003_bot/node_modules/hubot-diagnostics/src/diagnostics.coffee
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:36:47 GMT+0000 (UTC)] DEBUG Parsing help for /home/vagrant/gttest003_bot/node_modules/hubot-help/src/help.coffee
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:36:47 GMT+0000 (UTC)] ERROR hubot-heroku-alive included, but missing HUBOT_HEROKU_KEEPALIVE_URL. `heroku config:set HUBOT_HEROKU_KEEPALIVE_URL=$(heroku apps:info -s  | grep web-url | cut -d= -f2)`
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:36:47 GMT+0000 (UTC)] DEBUG Parsing help for /home/vagrant/gttest003_bot/node_modules/hubot-heroku-keepalive/src/heroku-keepalive.coffee
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:36:47 GMT+0000 (UTC)] DEBUG Parsing help for /home/vagrant/gttest003_bot/node_modules/hubot-google-images/src/google-images.coffee
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:36:47 GMT+0000 (UTC)] DEBUG Parsing help for /home/vagrant/gttest003_bot/node_modules/hubot-google-translate/src/google-translate.coffee
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:36:47 GMT+0000 (UTC)] DEBUG Parsing help for /home/vagrant/gttest003_bot/node_modules/hubot-pugme/src/pugme.coffee
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:36:47 GMT+0000 (UTC)] DEBUG Parsing help for /home/vagrant/gttest003_bot/node_modules/hubot-maps/src/maps.coffee
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:36:47 GMT+0000 (UTC)] INFO hubot-redis-brain: Using default redis on localhost:6379
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:36:47 GMT+0000 (UTC)] DEBUG Parsing help for /home/vagrant/gttest003_bot/node_modules/hubot-redis-brain/src/redis-brain.coffee
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:36:47 GMT+0000 (UTC)] DEBUG Parsing help for /home/vagrant/gttest003_bot/node_modules/hubot-rules/src/rules.coffee
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:36:47 GMT+0000 (UTC)] DEBUG Parsing help for /home/vagrant/gttest003_bot/node_modules/hubot-shipit/src/shipit.coffee
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:36:47 GMT+0000 (UTC)] DEBUG hubot-redis-brain: Successfully connected to Redis
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:36:47 GMT+0000 (UTC)] INFO hubot-redis-brain: Data for hubot brain retrieved from Redis
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:36:47 GMT+0000 (UTC)] INFO Telegram Bot Identified: gttest003_bot
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:37:07 GMT+0000 (UTC)] DEBUG { update_id: 364844667,
  message:
   { message_id: 31,
     from:
      { id: 157896654,
        first_name: 'Gennady',
        last_name: 'Trafimenkov',
        username: 'gtrafimenkov' },
     chat:
      { id: 157896654,
        first_name: 'Gennady',
        last_name: 'Trafimenkov',
        username: 'gtrafimenkov',
        type: 'private' },
     date: 1480181826,
     text: 'help' } }
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:37:07 GMT+0000 (UTC)] INFO Receiving message_id: 31
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:37:07 GMT+0000 (UTC)] DEBUG Received message: gtrafimenkov said 'gttest003_bot help'
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:37:07 GMT+0000 (UTC)] DEBUG Message 'gttest003_bot help' matched regex //^\s*[@]?gttest003_bot[:,]?\s*(?:help(?:\s+(.*))?$)/i/; listener.options = { id: null }
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:37:07 GMT+0000 (UTC)] DEBUG Executing listener callback for Message 'gttest003_bot help'
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:37:07 GMT+0000 (UTC)] DEBUG Message length: 1212
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:37:07 GMT+0000 (UTC)] DEBUG Message parts: 1
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:37:07 GMT+0000 (UTC)] ERROR Error: Bad Request: Can't parse message text: Can't find end of the entity starting at byte offset 1027
  at Function.TelegramBot.error (/home/vagrant/gttest003_bot/node_modules/telegrambot/lib/telegrambot.js:26:15)
  at Request._callback (/home/vagrant/gttest003_bot/node_modules/telegrambot/lib/telegrambot.js:47:66)
  at Request.self.callback (/home/vagrant/gttest003_bot/node_modules/request/request.js:186:22)
  at emitTwo (events.js:106:13)
  at Request.emit (events.js:191:7)
  at Request.<anonymous> (/home/vagrant/gttest003_bot/node_modules/request/request.js:1081:10)
  at emitOne (events.js:96:13)
  at Request.emit (events.js:188:7)
  at IncomingMessage.<anonymous> (/home/vagrant/gttest003_bot/node_modules/request/request.js:1001:12)
  at IncomingMessage.g (events.js:291:16)
  at emitNone (events.js:91:20)
  at IncomingMessage.emit (events.js:185:7)
  at endReadableNT (_stream_readable.js:974:12)
  at _combinedTickCallback (internal/process/next_tick.js:74:11)
  at process._tickCallback (internal/process/next_tick.js:98:9)

[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:37:13 GMT+0000 (UTC)] DEBUG { update_id: 364844668,
  message:
   { message_id: 32,
     from:
      { id: 157896654,
        first_name: 'Gennady',
        last_name: 'Trafimenkov',
        username: 'gtrafimenkov' },
     chat:
      { id: 157896654,
        first_name: 'Gennady',
        last_name: 'Trafimenkov',
        username: 'gtrafimenkov',
        type: 'private' },
     date: 1480181831,
     text: 'ping' } }
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:37:13 GMT+0000 (UTC)] INFO Receiving message_id: 32
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:37:13 GMT+0000 (UTC)] DEBUG Received message: gtrafimenkov said 'gttest003_bot ping'
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:37:13 GMT+0000 (UTC)] DEBUG Message 'gttest003_bot ping' matched regex //^\s*[@]?gttest003_bot[:,]?\s*(?:PING$)/i/; listener.options = { id: null }
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:37:13 GMT+0000 (UTC)] DEBUG Executing listener callback for Message 'gttest003_bot ping'
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:37:13 GMT+0000 (UTC)] DEBUG Message length: 4
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:37:13 GMT+0000 (UTC)] DEBUG Message parts: 1
[Sat Nov 26 2016 17:37:13 GMT+0000 (UTC)] INFO Sending message to room: 157896654

[gburgett]

The issue is definitely the unclosed underscore.

curl -XPOST -H 'content-type: application/json' https://api.telegram.org/$TELEGRAM_TOKEN/sendMessage -d @/tmp/test.json

contents of /tmp/test.json should be

{ 
  "chat_id": 344335405,
  "text": "This unmatched_underscore breaks telegram markdown parsing",
  "reply_to_message_id": 8,
  "parse_mode": "Markdown"
}

response:

{"ok":false,"error_code":400,"description":"Bad Request: can't parse entities in message text: Can't find end of the entity starting at byte offset 14"}

I’m asking telegram bot help about this, I’ll let you know what they say. Other markdown parsers that I’ve used will just leave a literal underscore when there’s no second, closing underscore. And in fact that’s how it works if you write an underscore in the web client, so I don’t see why it should work differently for the bot API.

[surfer190]

@gburgett Yes, same response.

http POST https://api.telegram.org/botXXX:YYY/sendMessage < test.json

returns:

{
    "description": "Bad Request: can't parse entities: Can't find end of the entity starting at byte offset 14",
    "error_code": 400,
    "ok": false
}