TDLib

TDLib (Telegram Database library) is a cross-platform library for building Telegram clients. It can be easily used from almost any programming language.

Table of Contents

• Features
• Examples and documentation
• Dependencies
• Building
• Installing dependencies
• Using in CMake C++ projects
• Using in Java projects
• Using with other programming languages
• License

Features

TDLib has many advantages. Notably TDLib is:

• Cross-platform: TDLib can be used on Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, Linux, Windows Phone, WebAssembly, watchOS, tvOS, Tizen, Cygwin. It should also work on other *nix systems with or without minimal effort.
• Multilanguage: TDLib can be easily used with any programming language that is able to execute C functions. Additionally it already has native Java (using JNI) bindings and C# (using C++/CLI and C++/CX) bindings.
• Easy to use: TDLib takes care of all network implementation details, encryption and local data storage.
• High-performance: in the Telegram Bot API, each TDLib instance handles more than 18000 active bots simultaneously.
• Well-documented: all TDLib API methods and public interfaces are fully documented.
• Consistent: TDLib guarantees that all updates are delivered in the right order.
• Reliable: TDLib remains stable on slow and unreliable Internet connections.
• Secure: all local data is encrypted using a user-provided encryption key.
• Fully-asynchronous: requests to TDLib don't block each other or anything else, responses are sent when they are available.

Examples and documentation

Take a look at our examples and documentation.

Dependencies

TDLib depends on:

• C++14 compatible compiler (Clang 3.4+, GCC 4.9+, MSVC 19.0+ (Visual Studio 2015+), Intel C++ Compiler 17+)
• OpenSSL
• zlib
• gperf (build only)
• CMake (3.0.2+, build only)
• PHP (optional, for docs generation)
• Doxygen (optional, for docs generation)

Building

Install all TDLib dependencies as described in Installing dependencies. Then enter directory containing TDLib sources and compile them using CMake:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
cmake --build .

Installing dependencies

macOS

• Install the latest Xcode command line tools.
• Install other dependencies, for example, using Homebrew:

brew install gperf cmake openssl

• Build TDLib with CMake as explained in building. You may need to manually specify path to the installed OpenSSL to CMake, e.g.,

cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DOPENSSL_ROOT_DIR=/usr/local/opt/openssl/ ..

Windows

• Download and install gperf. Add the path to gperf to the PATH environment variable.
• Install vcpkg.
• Run the following commands:

C:\src\vcpkg> .\vcpkg install openssl zlib

• Build TDLib with CMake as explained in building, but instead of cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release .. use

cmake -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=C:\src\vcpkg\scripts\buildsystems\vcpkg.cmake ..

Linux

• Install all dependencies using your package manager.

Using in CMake C++ projects

For C++ projects that use CMake, the best approach is to build TDLib as part of your project or to use a prebuilt installation.

There are several libraries that you could use in your CMake project:

• Td::TdJson, Td::TdJsonStatic — dynamic and static version of a JSON interface. This has a simple C interface, so it can be easily used with any programming language that is able to execute C functions.
• Td::TdStatic — static library with C++ interface.
• Td::TdCoreStatic — static library with low-level C++ interface intended mostly for internal usage.

For example, part of your CMakeLists.txt may look like this:

add_subdirectory(td)
target_link_libraries(YourTarget PRIVATE Td::TdStatic)

Or you could install TDLib and then reference it in your CMakeLists.txt like this:

find_package(Td 1.1.4 REQUIRED)
target_link_libraries(YourTarget PRIVATE Td::TdStatic)

See example/cpp/CMakeLists.txt.

Using in Java projects

TDLib provides native Java interface through JNI.

See example/java for example of using TDLib from Java and detailed build and usage instructions.

Using from other programming languages

TDLib provides efficient native C++, Java, and C# (will be released soon) interfaces. But for most use cases we suggest to use the JSON interface, which can be easily used with any programming language that is able to execute C functions. See example/python/tdjson_example.py for an example of such usage.

License

TDLib is licensed under the terms of the Boost Software License. See LICENSE_1_0.txt for more information.