telegram-format

Format Telegram message texts with Markdown or HTML

This library abstracts the formatting options for you.

Install

Node.js:

npm install telegram-format

Deno:

deno add @edjopato/telegram-format

Usage

import { html as format } from "telegram-format";
import { markdownv2 as format } from "telegram-format";

format.bold("hey");
//=> "*hey*"

format.italic("you");
//=> "_you_"

format.bold(format.italic("they"));
//=> "*_they_*"

format.url("me", "https://edjopato.de");
//=> "[me](https://edjopato.de)"

// Legacy but still works
import { markdown as format } from "telegram-format";

When using format as an alias its easy to switch between Markdown and HTML fast.

Escaping Input

When you have something that might be unescaped you need to use format.escape before formatting it.

const username = "master_yoda";
format.italic(format.escape(username));

format.monospace and format.monospaceBlock will escape on their own as they only need to escape specific characters. You do not need to escape the input in these cases.

MarkdownV2 and HTML are fairly similar in escaping inputs but Markdown is not. Markdown is still supported by this library and by Telegram for legacy reasons, but it behaves a bit differently. Markdown still escapes inputs and does not need format.escape before. Also nested formatting is not supported by telegram itself. Consider switching to MarkdownV2 or HTML for simplicity reasons.