telegram webhook

Telegram's webhook feature offers a more efficient alternative to polling for receiving bot updates. Unlike polling, webhooks allow Telegram to directly push updates to a specified server, reducing server load and enhancing scalability. Webhook setup requires an HTTPS endpoint, which can be obtained using Ngrok for local development. The allowed ports for webhooks are 443, 80, 88, and 8443, and the maximum number of webhooks per server is four due to port limitations. To implement a webhook in Node.js, the Telegram Bot API and Express.js are utilized. The bot's webhook is initialized and configured, and an Express route is created to handle incoming updates. The bot can then process messages and respond accordingly. The code for the Telegram webhook and Express route is provided on GitHub. By switching to webhook, developers can eliminate rate-limiting issues and improve their bot's performance, especially as traffic increases. It's important to configure the server correctly, use the allowed ports, and secure the connection with HTTPS.