Code snippets

This page can be read on its own, to find the code snippet you need right now.

It is also a follow-up to the page Introduction to the API. If you come from there, you can leave your command line open and just try out a few of these snippets.

Fetch updates (pure API)

To fetch messages sent to your Bot, you can use the getUpdates API method.

Note: You don't have to use getUpdates if you are writing your bot with the telegram.ext submodule, since telegram.ext.Updater takes care of fetching all updates for you. Read more about that here.

>>> updates = bot.getUpdates()
>>> print([u.message.text for u in updates])

To fetch images sent to your Bot:

>>> updates = bot.getUpdates()
>>> print([u.message.photo for u in updates if u.message.photo])

To reply to messages you'll always need the chat_id:

>>> chat_id = bot.getUpdates()[-1].message.chat_id

General code snippets

These snippets apply to both ways of fetching updates. If you're using telegram.ext, you can get the chat_id in your handler callback with update.message.chat_id.

Note: In general, you can send messages to users by passing their user id as the chat_id. If the bot has a chat with the user, it will send the message to that chat.

To post a text message:

>>> bot.sendMessage(chat_id=chat_id, text="I'm sorry Dave I'm afraid I can't do that.")

To post a text message with markdown:

>>> bot.sendMessage(chat_id=chat_id, 
...                 text="*bold* _italic_ [link](http://google.com).", 
...                 parse_mode=telegram.ParseMode.MARKDOWN)

To post a text message with HTML formatting:

>>> bot.sendMessage(chat_id=chat_id, 
...                 text='<b>bold</b> <i>italic</i> <a href="http://google.com">link</a>.', 
...                 parse_mode=telegram.ParseMode.HTML)

To post Emoji (special thanks to Tim Whitlock):

>>> bot.sendMessage(chat_id=chat_id, text=telegram.Emoji.PILE_OF_POO)

To post an image file from disk:

>>> bot.sendPhoto(chat_id=chat_id, photo=open('tests/test.png', 'rb'))

To post a voice file from disk:

>>> bot.sendVoice(chat_id=chat_id, voice=open('tests/telegram.ogg', 'rb'))

To post a file from an URL, this library offers a shortcut. You can pass the URL of the file, instead of downloading the file first. If you do that, the file will be downloaded and directly streamed into the response to Telegram.

>>> bot.sendPhoto(chat_id=chat_id, photo='https://telegram.org/img/t_logo.png')

To tell the user that something is happening on the bot's side:

>>> bot.sendChatAction(chat_id=chat_id, action=telegram.ChatAction.TYPING)

To create Custom Keyboards:

>>> custom_keyboard = [[ telegram.Emoji.THUMBS_UP_SIGN,
...                      telegram.Emoji.THUMBS_DOWN_SIGN ]]
>>> reply_markup = telegram.ReplyKeyboardMarkup(custom_keyboard)
>>> bot.sendMessage(chat_id=chat_id, text="Stay here, I'll be back.", reply_markup=reply_markup)

To hide the keyboard:

>>> reply_markup = telegram.ReplyKeyboardHide()
>>> bot.sendMessage(chat_id=chat_id, text="I'm back.", reply_markup=reply_markup)

To download a file (you will need its file_id):

>>> file_id = message.voice.file_id
>>> newFile = bot.getFile(file_id)
>>> newFile.download('voice.ogg')

There are many more API methods, to read the full API documentation visit the Telegram API documentation or the library documentation of telegram.Bot

What to read next?

If you haven't read the tutorial "Extensions – Your first Bot" yet, you might want to do it now.

There will be a FAQ page coming soon, as well.