Gowee / readability-bot

A Telegram bot that makes webpages "readable" (Instant View & Inline Mode)

Readability Bot

A wrapper around Readability.js.

Telegram bot: @Readabbot

Web app: https://readability-bot.vercel.app

API

Endpoint: /api/readability?url={URL}&format=json (e.g.)

Returns a self-explanatory JSON inherited from Readability.js.

Instant View for any* website

Bot

The Telegram bot returns "readable" articles with Instant View enabled automatically.

Web service

It is also possbile to apply a quick Instant View to any* website programmatically with the help of the web service. Assuming ARTICLE_TITLE="Lorem Ipsum", ARTICLE_URL="https://example.org/blog-post/1" and CHANNEL is the ID of channel, which typically is the subscribing channel for a (news/blog/etc.) website:

JavaScript:

const readableUrl = `https://readability-bot.vercel.app/api/readability?url=${encodeURIComponent(
  ARTICLE_URL
)}`;
const ivUrl = `https://t.me/iv?url=${encodeURIComponent(
  readableUrl
)}&rhash=71b64d09b0a20d`;

const message = `<a href="${ivUrl}"> </a><a href="${articleUrl}">${ARTICLE_TITLE}</a>`;
bot.sendMessage(CHANNEL, message, (parseMode = "html"));

Python:

  import urllib.parse import quote as percent_encode
  # ... ...
  readable_url = f'https://readability-bot.vercel.app/api/readability?url={percent_encode(ARTICLE_URL, safe="")}';
  iv_url = f'https://t.me/iv?url={percent_encode(readable_url, safe="")}&rhash=71b64d09b0a20d';

  message = f'<a href="{iv_url}"> </a><a href="{article_url}">{articleTitle}</a>';
  bot.send_message(CHANNEL, message, parse_mode="html") # await it?

^{_{*: Almost, with no guarantee. Compatibility issues for specific websites are generally not accepted in this project. Please report those to readability.js, if applicable.}}

Deploy Your Own

And, some environment variables are expected:

• BOT_TOKEN: REQUIRED for the bot service. Do not forget to set the webhook address to {APP_URL}/api/webhook.
• APP_URL: Optional, inferred automatically from Vercel runtime. e.g. https://readability-bot.vercel.app
• READABILITY_API_URL: Optional, inferred automatically from Vercel runtime. e.g. https://readability-bot.vercel.app/api/readability
• IV_RHASH: Optional, 71b64d09b0a20d is used by default.

Run locally

npx vercel dev