Botbox Converter: A Powerful, Multilingual Unit & Date Converter Bot for Telegram

In our interconnected world, we constantly encounter different systems of measurement, from planning an international trip to following an online recipe. Switching between apps or browser tabs for a quick calculation is a common, yet disruptive, part of our digital routine. Botbox Converter was built to solve this problem by bringing a fast, intelligent, and comprehensive conversion tool directly into the Telegram Messenger platform.

This project is more than just a unit converter; it’s a demonstration of robust backend engineering, a thoughtful user experience, and a scalable, multilingual architecture. It’s designed to be a reliable everyday tool for users and a showcase of modern bot development practices.

Project at a Glance

Category	Details
Project Name	Botbox Converter
Platform	Telegram Messenger
Status	✅ Live & Operational
Live Demo	Try Botbox Converter on Telegram
Key Features	Multilingual UI, Inline & Guided Modes, Advanced Date Parsing (Shamsi, Gregorian, Hijri)
Core Technology	Python 3
Key Libraries	python-telegram-bot, jdatetime, hijri-converter, python-dotenv
Database	Persistent user data (language preference) stored in a lightweight JSON file.
Deployment	Deployed on a Linux server as a resilient systemd service, ensuring continuous uptime and automatic restarts.

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Your Everyday Conversion Companion

Botbox Converter is designed to feel less like a rigid program and more like a knowledgeable assistant. It’s fast, intuitive, and packed with features that make it an indispensable tool for any Telegram user.

Comprehensive Unit Conversions at Your Fingertips

Why search the web when you can get instant answers in your chat? The bot supports a massive range of units across numerous categories, ready for any task.

• 📏 Length & Area: From kilometers to miles, square meters to acres.
• ⚖️ Mass & Volume: Grams to pounds, liters to gallons, and even traditional units like Misqal (مثقال) for precious goods.
• 💾 Digital Data: Convert kilobytes (KB) to kibibytes (KiB), megabits to megabytes, and more.
• ⚡️ Scientific & Engineering: Full support for Speed, Pressure, Energy, Power, and Time conversions.

A World-Class Date Converter

This is where Botbox Converter truly shines. It eliminates the headache of working with different calendar systems, making it an essential tool for users in many parts of the world.

• Three-Way Calendar Support: Seamlessly convert between Solar Hijri (Jalali/شمسی), Gregorian (میلادی), and Lunar Hijri (Qamari/قمری).
• Intelligent, Human-like Parsing: The bot understands dates just like you write them. You can type 16 Shahrivar 1371, july 10, 2025, 1371/06/16, or simply today—it finds the correct date and converts it instantly. This makes it one of the most user-friendly tools for anyone needing to convert Shamsi to Gregorian (تبدیل شمسی به میلادی).

An Experience Designed for Everyone

A powerful tool is only great if it’s easy to use. The user experience was a top priority, resulting in a bot that caters to both beginners and power users.

• Dual Interaction Modes:
  • Inline Mode: For speed, simply type your query in natural language (e.g., 10 kg to lbs).
  • Guided Mode: For clarity, use the “Quick Convert” button for a clean, step-by-step process.
• Truly Multilingual: Units are displayed with both their universal symbol and their full name in your chosen language (e.g., kg - Kilogram or kg - کیلوگرم), eliminating ambiguity.
• Visually Appealing Results: Conversions are presented in a clean, easy-to-read format using emojis, bolding, and logical spacing to make the information clear at a glance.

Technical Architecture & Development Insights

Beyond its user-facing features, Botbox Converter is built on a foundation of clean, scalable, and professional development practices.

Modular & Stateful Python Core

The bot is developed in Python 3, leveraging a modular architecture that separates concerns for maintainability and scalability. The logic is divided into distinct packages:

• handlers: Manages all interactions with the Telegram API, including commands, messages, and button callbacks.
• utils: Contains the core “brains” of the application—the conversion engine, the date parser, the database interface, and the internationalization (i18n) manager.
• locales: Holds the JSON translation files, allowing for easy addition of new languages without touching the core logic.

Unlike simple stateless bots, this project uses a persistent JSON-based database to store user-specific data, such as language preferences. This allows for a personalized experience that remembers users between sessions.

Robust User Interaction and State Management

To handle complex, multi-step conversations, the bot utilizes the powerful ConversationHandler from the python-telegram-bot library. This is most evident in the secure, password-protected admin panel, which allows for stateful interactions like initiating a broadcast, sending the message content, and then selecting the target audience. For simpler flows like the guided unit conversion, the bot uses the more lightweight user_data dictionary to track user progress.

Resilient Production Deployment

A bot in a portfolio should demonstrate production readiness. Botbox Converter is deployed on a Linux server and managed by systemd, the industry-standard init system. The custom service file ensures:

• Automatic Startup: The bot starts automatically when the server boots.
• Continuous Uptime: The service is configured to restart automatically if the script ever fails for any reason.
• Daemonization: The bot runs as a background process, with its output correctly managed and logged by journalctl, allowing for easy monitoring and debugging.

This project showcases a comprehensive skill set, from backend logic and database management to user experience design and production-level deployment.