tdl  

tdl is a fairly simple JavaScript wrapper for TDLib (Telegram Database library), a library to create Telegram clients or bots.

• Requirements
• Installation
• Getting started
• API
• Types
• Other JavaScript runtimes
• Troubleshooting
• Issue tracker

Requirements

• Node.js v16 or newer
• The tdjson shared library (libtdjson.so on Linux, libtdjson.dylib on macOS, tdjson.dll on Windows), of TDLib version 1.8.0 or newer
• In rare cases, a C++ compiler and Python installed to build the node addon¹

Installation

1. Install tdl: npm install tdl
2. Build TDLib or install pre-built TDLib libraries (npm install prebuilt-tdlib)
3. If you use TypeScript, types for TDLib are installed separately, see the Types section

To use tdl, you need to get TDLib first, which is dynamically loaded by tdl. The tdjson shared library should be present in the system search paths (otherwise the path to libtdjson can be specified manually in tdl.configure).

Tip: When building TDLib, the libraries can be installed into the system using cmake --install . (optionally specify the --prefix option, the default is /usr/local) after TDLib has been built successfully. This command may require sudo.

prebuilt-tdlib

Instead of building TDLib from source, you can possibly install pre-built TDLib libraries distributed through the prebuilt-tdlib npm package. An example of using libraries from prebuilt-tdlib is present in the section below. The supported systems are x86_64 & arm64 GNU/Linux, x86_64 & arm64 macOS, and x86_64 Windows. To install prebuilt-tdlib for a specific TDLib version instead of latest, for example v1.8.30, run npm i prebuilt-tdlib@td-1.8.30. The available versions of prebuilt-tdlib can be found by running npm info prebuilt-tdlib dist-tags. See the README of prebuilt-tdlib for additional information.

Getting started

const tdl = require('tdl')

// If libtdjson is not present in the system search paths, the path to the
// libtdjson shared library can be set manually, e.g.:
//   tdl.configure({ tdjson: '/usr/local/lib/libtdjson.dylib' })
// The library directory can be set separate from the library name,
// example to search for libtdjson in the directory of the current script:
//   tdl.configure({ libdir: __dirname })

// Instead of building TDLib yourself, the aforementioned prebuilt-tdlib can be
// used as follows:
//   const { getTdjson } = require('prebuilt-tdlib')
//   tdl.configure({ tdjson: getTdjson() })

const client = tdl.createClient({
  apiId: 2222, // Your api_id
  apiHash: '0123456789abcdef0123456789abcdef' // Your api_hash
})
// Passing apiId and apiHash is mandatory,
// these values can be obtained at https://my.telegram.org/

client.on('error', console.error)

// Aside of receiving responses to your requests, the server can push to you
// events called "updates" which can be received as follows:
client.on('update', update => {
  console.log('Received update:', update)
})

async function main () {
  // Log in to a Telegram account. By default, with no arguments, this function will
  // ask for phone number etc. in the console. Instead of logging in as a user,
  // it's also possible to log in as a bot using `client.loginAsBot('<TOKEN>')`.
  await client.login()

  // Invoke a TDLib method. The information regarding TDLib method list and
  // documentation is below this code block.
  const me = await client.invoke({ _: 'getMe' })
  console.log('My user:', me)

  // Invoke some other TDLib method.
  const chats = await client.invoke({
    _: 'getChats',
    chat_list: { _: 'chatListMain' },
    limit: 10
  })
  console.log('A part of my chat list:', chats)

  // Close the instance so that TDLib exits gracefully and the JS runtime can
  // finish the process.
  await client.close()
}

main().catch(console.error)

Instead of using CommonJS (require('tdl')), one can import tdl in an EcmaScript module through the interoperability with CommonJS: import * as tdl from 'tdl'. Or alternatively import specific functions using import { createClient } from 'tdl'.

The API list of TDLib methods, which are called using client.invoke, can be found at, e.g.:

• https://core.telegram.org/tdlib/docs/annotated.html (possibly outdated)
• or in the td_api.tl file in the TDLib repository.

In the TDLib documentation, the bytes type means a base64-encoded string. int64 accepts either a number or a string, pass string for large numbers. int32, int53, and double are the number JS type.

If TypeScript types for TDLib are installed, note the types are annotated with jsdoc comments, and the documentation can also be browsed directly in the .d.ts file or in the autocompletion menu of the editor.

See also https://core.telegram.org/tdlib/getting-started for some basic information on how to use TDLib (tdl handles the authorization part with client.login). Note that the TDLib JSON interface actually sends a @type field, but tdl renames it to _.

Some short examples are available in the examples/ directory.

API

Note: A more exhaustive documentation is available in the TypeScript typings file.

tdl.configure(options: TDLibConfiguration) => void

Configure several parameters such as libtdjson filename or verbosity level. This function should be called before tdl.createClient or tdl.execute. Can be called multiple times.

The possible parameters are:

tdl.configure({
  // Path to the library. By default, it is 'tdjson.dll' on Windows,
  // 'libtdjson.dylib' on macOS, or 'libtdjson.so' otherwise.
  tdjson: 'libtdjson.so',
  // Path to the library directory. Defaults to the empty string.
  libdir: '/usr/local/lib',
  // Set the verbosity level of TDLib. Defaults to 1.
  verbosityLevel: 1,
  // Advanced options:
  useOldTdjsonInterface: false,
  receiveTimeout: 10,
})

Some examples:

• tdl.configure({ tdjson: '/root/libtdjson.so', verbosityLevel: 5 })
• tdl.configure({ libdir: '/usr/local/lib', tdjson: 'libtdjson.dylib.1.8.6' })
• tdl.configure({ libdir: __dirname }) (use libtdjson from the directory of the current script, in CJS)
• tdl.configure({ tdjson: require('prebuilt-tdlib').getTdjson() }) (use libtdjson from prebuilt-tdlib)

The path concatenation of libdir + tdjson is directly passed to dlopen (Unix) or LoadLibrary (Windows). Check documentation of your OS to find out where the shared library will be searched for.

tdl.createClient(options: ClientOptions) => Client

Create a TDLib client.

const client = tdl.createClient({
  apiId: 2222, // Your api_id
  apiHash: '0123456789abcdef0123456789abcdef' // Your api_hash
  // ... other options ...
})

The options that can be passed here have the following interface:

type ClientOptions = {
  apiId: number, // Can be obtained at https://my.telegram.org
  apiHash: string, // Can be obtained at https://my.telegram.org
  databaseDirectory: string, // Path, relative to cwd (defaults to '_td_database')
  filesDirectory: string, // Path, relative to cwd (defaults to '_td_files')
  databaseEncryptionKey: string, // Optional key for database encryption
  useTestDc: boolean, // Use test telegram server (defaults to false)
  tdlibParameters: Object, // Raw TDLib parameters
  skipOldUpdates: boolean // Advanced option.
}

Of these fields, only apiId and apiHash are required. Any other field can be omitted. They are more thoroughly described in the documentation comments of TypeScript types.

The tdlibParameters option is described in https://core.telegram.org/tdlib/docs/classtd_1_1td__api_1_1tdlib_parameters.html.

By default, in tdl, tdlibParameters is set to:

tdlibParameters: {
  use_message_database: true,
  use_secret_chats: false,
  system_language_code: 'en',
  application_version: '1.0',
  device_model: 'Unknown device',
  system_version: 'Unknown',
  api_id: options.apiId,
  api_hash: options.apiHash,
  database_directory: options.databaseDirectory,
  files_directory: options.filesDirectory,
  use_test_dc: options.useTestDc
}

In a real application, you probably want to change device_model and other parameters.

client.login(arg?: LoginDetails | (() => LoginDetails)) => Promise<void>

Attach an update handler to log you in to your Telegram account.

await client.login()

By default, tdl asks the user for the phone number, auth code, and 2FA password (if needed) in the console. You can override the defaults with custom functions that return promises, for example:

// Example
await client.login({
  async getPhoneNumber(retry) {
    if (retry) throw new Error('Invalid phone number')
    return '+9996620001'
  },
  async getAuthCode(retry) {
    if (retry) throw new Error('Invalid auth code')
    return '22222'
  },
  async getPassword(passwordHint, retry) {
    if (retry) throw new Error('Invalid password')
    return 'mypassword'
  },
  async getName() {
    return { firstName: 'John', lastName: 'Doe' }
  }
})

getName is called if the user is not signed up.

client.login is a pretty basic function that supports only a subset of authentication methods available on Telegram. It is possible (and advisable for larger apps) not to use the client.login helper and implement the authorization process manually, handling authorizationStateWaitPhoneNumber and other updates.

This function accepts the following interface:

interface LoginDetails {
  getPhoneNumber?: (retry?: boolean) => Promise<string>,
  getEmailAddress?: () => Promise<string>,
  getEmailCode?: () => Promise<string>,
  confirmOnAnotherDevice?: (link: string) => void,
  getAuthCode?: (retry?: boolean) => Promise<string>,
  getPassword?: (passwordHint: string, retry?: boolean) => Promise<string>,
  getName?: () => Promise<{ firstName: string, lastName?: string }>
}
declare function login(details?: LoginDetails | (() => LoginDetails)): Promise<void>

getEmailAddress and getEmailCode are called in TDLib >= v1.8.6 only.

client.loginAsBot(token: string | (() => string | Promise<string>)) => Promise<void>

Instead of logging in as a user, you can log in as a bot using a bot token.

await client.loginAsBot('YOUR_BOT_TOKEN') // Enter your token from @BotFather

client.on(event: string, callback: Function) => Client

Attach an event listener. The 'update' event can be used to iterate through received updates.

function onUpdate (update) {
  console.log('New update:', update)
}
client.on('update', onUpdate)
client.on('error', console.error)

If an exception is thrown inside your event listener, it is emitted as the 'error' event (other things like invalid client options or potential internal errors can also be emitted as 'error'). Ideally, you should always have a listener on client.on('error'), otherwise an unhandled promise rejection will appear.

The other available event is 'close'. After close (the authorizationStateClosed update), it isn't possible to send requests and the client should not be used anymore.

You may consider using reactive libraries like RxJS or most.js for convenient event processing.

client.addListener is an alias for client.on.

client.once(event: string, callback: Function) => Client

Attach a one-time listener.

client.off(event: string, listener: Function) => boolean

Remove an event listener.

function listener (u) {
  console.log('New update:', u)
  if (u?.authorization_state?._ === 'authorizationStateReady')
    client.off('update', listener) // Removes the listener
}
client.on('update', listener)

The returned value indicates whether the listener has been successfully removed.

client.removeListener is an alias for client.off.

client.iterUpdates() => AsyncIterableIterator<Td.Update>

An alternative approach (added in tdl v8.0.0) to get updates is to use async iterators instead of client.on('update', ...):

for await (const update of client.iterUpdates()) {
  console.log('Received update:', update)
  if (update._ === 'updateOption' && update.name === 'my_id') {
    console.log(`My ID is ${update.value.value}!`)
    break
  }
}

client.invoke(query: Request) => Promise<Reponse>

Call a TDLib method asynchronously. If the request fails, the promise rejects with TDLibError containing the error code and error message.

For the information regarding TDLib API list, see the "Getting started" section of this README.

const chats = await client.invoke({
  _: 'getChats',
  chat_list: { _: 'chatListMain' },
  limit: 4000
})

await client.invoke({
  _: 'sendMessage',
  chat_id: 123456789,
  input_message_content: {
    _: 'inputMessageText',
    text: {
      _: 'formattedText',
      text: '👻'
    }
  }
})

client.close() => Promise<void>

Close the TDLib client.

await client.close()

tdl.execute(query: Request) => Td.error | Response

Call a TDLib method synchronously. This function can be used only with the methods marked as "can be called synchronously" in the TDLib documentation.

const res = tdl.execute({
  _: 'getTextEntities',
  text: '@telegram /test_command https://telegram.org telegram.me'
})

client.execute is the same as tdl.execute.

tdl.setLogMessageCallback(maxVerbosityLevel: number, cb: Function | null) => void

Set the callback that is called when a message is added to the TDLib log. This corresponds to the td_set_log_message_callback tdjson function. The callback overrides the previously set callback.

Types

Tip: It is considerably more convenient to use tdl with TypeScript, which enables full autocompletion for the TDLib methods and objects along with the documentation.

While tdl works with any TDLib version (above the requirement), the TypeScript types have to be installed specifically for the TDLib version you use. This can be done via a small tdl-install-types utility, which downloads and generates types for you. It can be called using npx tdl-install-types without any separate installation.

$ npx tdl-install-types [<options>] [<target>]

(Type "y" in case it asks to install the tdl-install-types package.)

The utility can generate types given a tdjson library file (e.g. npx tdl-install-types ./libtdjson.so), a TDLib git ref (examples: npx tdl-install-types v1.8.0, npx tdl-install-types master, npx tdl-install-types 2de39ffffe71dc41c538e66085658d21cecbae08), or a td_api.tl file (npx tdl-install-types td_api.tl). When called without arguments or with the prebuilt-tdlib argument, it will generate types for the installed version of prebuilt-tdlib.

By default, the types are generated into a tdlib-types.d.ts file that you can git-commit. The declaration file should be inside your project to work. When you update the version of TDLib, don't forget to also update the types: it's important to keep the types in sync with the interface TDLib actually uses.

$ # Various examples:
$ npx tdl-install-types libtdjson.so # generate types for this shared library in the cwd
$ npx tdl-install-types 0ada45c3618108a62806ce7d9ab435a18dac1aab # types for this TDLib commit
$ npx tdl-install-types # tries to use prebult-tdlib
$ npx tdl-install-types prebuilt-tdlib # same as the above one
$ npx tdl-install-types v1.8.0 # types for the git tag in the TDLib repository

See npx tdl-install-types --help for additional information.

The types can be imported by using the tdlib-types module name:

import type * as Td from 'tdlib-types'
// And use as: Td.message, Td.user, ...

That is, a package named tdlib-types does not need to be installed separately.

Note that when using npx, the version of tdl-install-types might be cached and outdated if you are not appending the @latest tag (npx tdl-install-types@latest --help). You can also install the utility globally or per-project as a dev dependency.

Other JavaScript runtimes

Since bun is Node.js-compatible and supports Node-API, tdl should work out of the box, however the stability may not be the best yet.

deno can also import tdl through the node compatibility via import * as tdl from 'npm:tdl'. To use tdl in deno, you must ensure that your deno version is 1.44.2 (2024-06-13) or greater. The Node-API implementation was broken in older deno versions and can easily result in segfaults. There's a small example in examples/deno-example.ts.

tdl depends on native libraries and cannot be used in the browser. However, TDLib itself can possibly work in the browser by compiling it to WebAssembly. There is an outdated official tdweb library, for example. Previously, tdl implemented basic browser support as well, but the idea has been dropped.

Troubleshooting

Some of the possible errors include:

#

• Dynamic Loading Error: Win32 error 126 (Windows)
• Dynamic Loading Error: dlopen(…) image not found (macOS)
• …cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory (Linux)

The tdjson shared library or one of its dependencies (for example, libssl) cannot be found. To troubleshoot dependency issues, try to run ldd libtdjson.so on Linux or otool -L libtdjson.dylib on macOS. On Windows, you can use an app like Dependency Walker.

Recheck the documentation of dlopen (Linux), dlopen (macOS), Dynamic-Link Library Search Order (Windows) to make sure the shared library is present in the search paths. By default, Linux does not search in the current working directory, while macOS does.

With prebuilt-tdlib, everything should work out of the box (on supported systems).

#

• fatal error: napi.h: no such file or directory
• error: no such file or directory: …/node-modules/node-addon-api

The path to the directory where you execute npm install likely contains spaces, which is not supported by gyp: nodejs/node-gyp#65 (comment).

#

• No native build was found for platform=…

A pre-built node addon is not available for your system¹, and the node addon has not been built from source. gcc, g++, python3, make should be available on your system to build the tdl's node addon; npm install (or npm ci or similar) should be run to execute the building. Also note that, for example, when building a Docker container, you can't generally just copy the node modules from the host system.

#

• tdjson is already loaded

If you use node:worker_threads, there are some caveats. tdl with the new tdjson interface can be used in only one thread. With the old tdjson interface, i.e. tdl.configure({ useOldTdjsonInterface: true }), it is indeed possible to use tdl in multiple worker threads, however tdjson and libdir options of tdl.configure will be ignored on subsequent tdl initializations. You might also want to set tdl.configure({ verbosityLevel: 'default' }) so the verbosity level is set only once. The client should not be shared to other threads.

#

• Error while reading RSA public key

You can get this error if libtdjson is dynamically linked against OpenSSL and some of the symbols got resolved into Node.js instead of the system OpenSSL.

Note that Node.js also uses OpenSSL (the distributed binaries are statically linked against it) and exports the OpenSSL symbols. In the result, there are two versions of OpenSSL in the same application. Then, using standard dlopen, especially on Linux, most of the symbols will be resolved into libcrypto inside the Node.js binary, not into the system libcrypto. It still can work correctly if the versions are ABI-compatible, i.e. if TDLib is linked against an OpenSSL version sufficiently similar to the version that Node.js uses (node -p "process.versions.openssl").

tdl tries to get around the symbol conflict issues by using RTLD_DEEPBIND when available, so these issues should be rare in practice (unless you use musl).

You can use lldb or gdb to check whether the symbols get resolved into Node.js. For example, open lldb -- node index.js and set these breakpoints:

break set -r EVP_ -s node
break set -r AES_ -s node
break set -r BIO_ -s node
break set -r RSA_ -s node
break set -r CRYPTO_ -s node

It's also possible to set breakpoints inside the system OpenSSL:

break set -r . -s libcrypto.so.1.1
break set -r . -s libssl.so.1.1

To solve this issue, try to link TDLib statically against OpenSSL (the OPENSSL_USE_STATIC_LIBS option in cmake) or link it against the OpenSSL version that Node.js uses.

Another possible option is to rebuild Node.js from source, linking it dynamically against the same system OpenSSL. That way, there is only one instance of OpenSSL in the application. For example, using nvm, you can install Node.js v18 from source on GNU/Linux via this command:

$ nvm install -s 18 --shared-openssl --shared-openssl-includes=/usr/include/ --shared-openssl-libpath=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/

However, it's inconvenient for most users to rebuild Node.js.

Another hypothetical solution is to rebuild TDLib with the OpenSSL headers distributed in Node.js (<path-to-node>/include/node/) without linking it to anything, simply leaving the undefined symbols. Using this option, there is also only one OpenSSL. I haven't checked that this works or that Node exports all the symbols needed for TDLib. With this option, TDLib also should be rebuilt every time Node.js updates the OpenSSL dependency.

This issue doesn't apply to Electron because it doesn't export the OpenSSL symbols.

#

• Segmentation fault

The cause of the segfault might be the same as above. If you get segmentation faults, open an issue.

Issue tracker

Reporting bugs (besides feature requests and other stuff) is very welcome in the tdl's GitHub issue tracker. However, while I can answer some questions on how to use TDLib itself, I do not know the entirety of TDLib API, and it may be better (and faster to get the response) to ask questions related to TDLib specifics in the t.me/tdlibchat group.

Footnotes

1. tdl is packaged with pre-built addons for Windows (x86_64), GNU/Linux (x86_64, arm64; glibc >= 2.22), and macOS (x86_64, arm64; v10.14+). If a pre-built binary is not available for your system, then the node addon will be built using node-gyp, requiring Python and a C++ toolchain (C++14 is required) to be installed (on Windows, MSVS or Build Tools). Pass --build-from-source to never use the pre-built binaries. arm64 binaries are not tested in the CI. Linux binaries are statically linked against libstdc++. ↩ ↩²