Inline mode allows the user to query a chatbot from a different chat, it’s a powerful tool to make your chatbot go viral, read more here.

Every query invoked with a line like @mychatbot how are you? are routed through the Telegram Receiver node as a message of type inline-query, it will look like

{
  originalMessage: {
    // ...
  },
  payload: {
    content: 'how are you?',
    type: 'inline_query',
    // ...
  }
}

and can be sent to any other parser nodes like other messages.

At some point of the flow it might be useful to route the incoming message on a different path based on the type, for example in order to handle the inline query differently, here is where the Switch node might be useful

Switch node example

After a inline query is received, use a Function node to prepare the payload to send to a Inline Query Results node and then to a Telegram Sender node.

The Function node

msg.payload = [
  {
    type: 'article',
    id: 'AAA-123',
    title: 'Title #1',
    input_message_content: {
      message_text: 'You selected title #1',
    }
  },
  {
    type: 'article',
    id: 'AAA-124',
    title: 'Title #2',
    input_message_content: {
      message_text: 'You selected title #2'
    }
  }
]
return msg;

Learn more here about what kind of message it’s possible to send as inline query answer.

Available parameters for msg.payload