Telegram Binding

The Telegram binding allows sending and receiving messages to and from Telegram clients (https://telegram.org (opens new window)), by using the Telegram Bot API.

Prerequisites

As described in the Telegram Bot API (https://core.telegram.org/bots#6-botfather (opens new window)), this is the manual procedure needed in order to get the necessary information.

1. Create a new Bot and get the Token

   • On a Telegram client open a chat with BotFather.
   • Send /newbot to BotFather and fill in all the needed information. The authentication token that is given will be needed in the next steps.
   • The token is a combination with double point separated parts of numbers and letters e.g.: 158642643:ABCHL_O-MUovQ1NzrDF5R_nqLbFhPPrg9Jps

2. Create the destination chat

   • Open a chat with your new Bot and send any message to it. The next step will not work unless you send a message to your bot first.

3. Get the chatID

   • Open a browser and invoke https://api.telegram.org/bot<token>/getUpdates (where <token> is the authentication token previously obtained e.g.: https://api.telegram.org/bot158642643:ABCHL_O-MUovQ1NzrDF5R_nqLbFhPPrg9Jps/getUpdates)
   • Look at the JSON result to find the value of id: that's the chatID.

Note that if using a Telegram group chat, the group chatIDs are prefixed with a dash that must be included in the config (e.g. -22334455). If this does not work for you (the JSON response may be empty), or you want to send to more than one recipient (= another chatID), the alternative is to contact (= open a chat with) a Telegram bot to respond with the chatID. There's a number of them such as @myidbot or @chatid_echo_bot - open a chat, eventually tap /start and it will return the chatID you're looking for. Another option is @getidsbot which gives you much more information. Note bots may work or not at any time so eventually you need to try another one.

1. Test the bot

   • Open this URL in your web browser, replacing <token> with the authentication token and <chatId> with the chatId:
   • https://api.telegram.org/bot<token>/sendMessage?chat_id=<chatId>&text=testing
   • Your Telegram-bot should send you a message with the text: testing

Notice: By default your bot will only receive messages that either start with the '/' symbol or mention the bot by username (or if you talk to it directly). However, if you add your bot to a group you must either talk to BotFather and send the command "/setprivacy" and then disable it or you give admin rights to your bot in that group. Otherwise you will not be able to receive those messages.

Supported Things

telegramBot - A Telegram Bot that can send and receive messages.

The Telegram binding supports the following state channels which originate from the last message sent to the Telegram bot:

• message text or URL
• message date
• full name of sender (first name + last name)
• username of sender
• chat id (used to identify the chat of the last message)
• reply id (used to identify an answer from a user of a previously sent message by the binding)

There are also event channels that provide received messages or query callback responses as JSON payloads for easier handling in rules.

Please note that the binding channels cannot be used to send messages. In order to send a message, an action must be used instead.

Thing Configuration

telegramBot parameters:

Property	Default	Required	Description
chatIds		Yes	A list of chatIds that are entered one per line in the UI, or are comma separated values when using textual config.
botToken		Yes	Authentication token that looks like 1122334455:AABBCCDDEEFFGG1122334455667788
parseMode	None	No	Support for formatted messages, values: Markdown or HTML.
proxyHost	None	No	Proxy host for telegram binding.
proxyPort	None	No	Proxy port for telegram binding.
proxyType	SOCKS5	No	Type of proxy server for telegram binding (SOCKS5 or HTTP).
longPollingTime	25	No	Timespan in seconds for long polling the telegram API.

By default chat ids are bi-directionally, i.e. they can send and receive messages. They can be prefixed with an access modifier:

• < restricts the chat to send only, i.e. this chat id can send messages to openHAB, but will never receive a notification.
• > restricts the chat to receive only, i.e. this chat id will receive all notifications, but messages from this chat id will be discarded.

To use the reply function, chat ids need to be bi-directional.

telegram.thing (no proxy):

Thing telegram:telegramBot:Telegram_Bot [ chatIds="ID", botToken="TOKEN" ]

telegram.thing (multiple chat ids, one bi-directional chat (ID1), one outbound-only (ID2)):

Thing telegram:telegramBot:Telegram_Bot [ chatIds="ID1",">ID2", botToken="TOKEN" ]

telegram.thing (markdown format):

Thing telegram:telegramBot:Telegram_Bot [ chatIds="ID", botToken="TOKEN", parseMode ="Markdown" ]

telegram.thing (SOCKS5 proxy server is used):

Thing telegram:telegramBot:Telegram_Bot [ chatIds="ID", botToken="TOKEN", proxyHost="HOST", proxyPort="PORT", proxyType="TYPE" ]

or HTTP proxy server

Thing telegram:telegramBot:Telegram_Bot [ chatIds="ID", botToken="TOKEN", proxyHost="localhost", proxyPort="8123", proxyType="HTTP" ]

State Channels

Channel Type ID	Item Type	Description
lastMessageText	String	The last received message
lastMessageURL	String	The URL of the last received message content
lastMessageDate	DateTime	The date of the last received message (UTC)
lastMessageName	String	The full name of the sender of the last received message
lastMessageUsername	String	The username of the sender of the last received message
chatId	String	The id of the chat of the last received message
replyId	String	The id of the reply which was passed to sendTelegram() as replyId argument. This id can be used to have an unambiguous assignment of the users reply to the message which was sent by the bot

All channels are read-only. Either lastMessageText or lastMessageURL are populated for a given message. If the message did contain text, the content is written to lastMessageText. If the message did contain an audio, photo, video or voice, the URL to retrieve that content can be found in lastMessageURL.

Event Channels

messageEvent

When a message is received this channel will be triggered with a simplified version of the message data as the event, payload encoded as a JSON string. The following table shows the possible fields, any null values will be missing from the JSON payload.

Field	Type	Description
message_id	Long	Unique message ID in this chat
from	String	First and/or last name of sender
chat_id	Long	Unique chat ID
text	String	Message text
animation_url	String	URL to download animation from
audio_url	String	URL to download audio from
document_url	String	URL to download file from
photo_url	Array	Array of URLs to download photos from
sticker_url	String	URL to download sticker from
video_url	String	URL to download video from
video_note_url	String	URL to download video note from
voice_url	String	URL to download voice clip from

messageRawEvent

When a message is received this channel will be triggered with the raw message data as the event payload, encoded as a JSON string. See the Message class for details (opens new window)

callbackEvent

When a Callback Query response is received this channel will be triggered with a simplified version of the callback data as the event, payload encoded as a JSON string. The following table shows the possible fields, any null values will be missing from the JSON payload.

Field	Type	Description
message_id	Long	Unique message ID of the original Query message
from	String	First and/or last name of sender
chat_id	Long	Unique chat ID
callback_id	String	Unique callback ID to send receipt confirmation to
reply_id	String	Plain text name of original Query
text	String	Selected response text from options give in original Query

callbackRawEvent

When a Callback Query response is received this channel will be triggered with the raw callback data as the event payload, encoded as a JSON string. See the CallbackQuery class for details (opens new window)

Rule Actions

This binding includes a number of rule actions, which allow the sending of Telegram messages from within rules.

val telegramAction = getActions("telegram","telegram:telegramBot:<uid>")

where uid is the Thing UID of the Telegram thing (not the chat id!).

Once this action instance is retrieved, you can invoke the `sendTelegram' method on it:

telegramAction.sendTelegram("Hello world!")

The following actions are supported. Each of the actions returns true on success or false on failure.

Actions to send messages to all configured chats

These actions will send a message to all chat ids configured for this bot.

Action	Description
sendTelegram(String message)	Sends a message.
sendTelegram(String format, Object... args)	Sends a formatted message (See https://docs.oracle.com/en/java/javase/17/docs/api/java.base/java/util/Formatter.html (opens new window) for more information).
sendTelegramQuery(String message, String replyId, String... buttons)	Sends a question to the user that can be answered via the defined buttons. The replyId can be freely choosen and is sent back with the answer. Then, the id is required to identify what question has been answered (e.g. in case of multiple open questions). The final result looks like this:
sendTelegramAnswer(String replyId, String message)	Sends a message after the user has answered a question. You should always call this method after you received an answer. It will remove buttons from the specific question and will also stop the progress bar displayed at the client side. If no message is necessary, just pass null here.
deleteTelegramQuery(String replyId)	Deletes a question in the chat. The replyId must be the same as used for the corresponding sendTelegramQuery() action.
sendTelegramPhoto(String photoURL, String caption)	Sends a picture. Can be one of the URL formats, see the Note below, or a base64 encoded image (simple base64 data or data URI scheme).
sendTelegramPhoto(String photoURL, String caption, String username, String password)	Sends a picture which is downloaded from a username/password protected http/https address.
sendTelegramAnimation(String animationURL, String caption)	Send animation files either GIF or H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video without sound.
sendTelegramVideo(String videoURL, String caption)	Send MP4 video files up to 50MB.

Note: In actions that require a file URL, the following formats are acceptable:

• http://foo.com/bar.jpg
• https://foo.com/bar.jpg
• file://c:\\foo\\bar.jpg
• c:\\foo\\bar.jpg
• /etc/openhab/html/bar.jpg

Actions to send messages to a particular chat

Just put the chat id (must be a long value!) followed by an "L" as the first argument to one of the above mentioned APIs:

telegramAction.sendTelegram(1234567L, "Hello world!")

Advanced Callback Query Response

This binding stores the callbackId and recalls it using the replyId, but this information is lost if openHAB restarts. If you store the callbackId, chatId, and optionally messageId somewhere that will be persisted when openHAB shuts down, you can use the following overload of sendTelegramAnswer to respond to any Callback Query.

telegramAction.sendTelegramAnswer(chatId, callbackId, messageId, message)

Full Example

Send a text message to telegram chat

telegram.rules

rule "Send telegram with Fixed Message"
when
   Item Foo changed
then
   val telegramAction = getActions("telegram","telegram:telegramBot:2b155b22")
   telegramAction.sendTelegram("item Foo changed")
end

Send a text message with a formatted message

telegram.rules

rule "Send telegram with Formatted Message"
when
   Item Foo changed
then
   val telegramAction = getActions("telegram","telegram:telegramBot:2b155b22")
   telegramAction.sendTelegram("item Foo changed to %s and number is %.1f", Foo.state.toString, 23.56)
end

Send an image to telegram chat

http, https, and file are the only protocols allowed or a base64 encoded image.

telegram.rules

rule "Send telegram with image and caption from image accessible by url"
when
    Item Light_GF_Living_Table changed
then
    val telegramAction = getActions("telegram","telegram:telegramBot:2b155b22")
    telegramAction.sendTelegramPhoto("https://www.openhab.org/openhab-logo-top.png",
        "sent from openHAB")
end

telegram.rules

rule "Send telegram with image without caption from image accessible by url"
when
    Item Light_GF_Living_Table changed
then
    val telegramAction = getActions("telegram","telegram:telegramBot:2b155b22")
    telegramAction.sendTelegramPhoto("https://www.openhab.org/openhab-logo-top.png",
        null)
end

telegram.rules

rule "Send telegram with image from password protected http source"
when
    Item Light_GF_Living_Table changed
then
    val telegramAction = getActions("telegram","telegram:telegramBot:2b155b22")
    telegramAction.sendTelegramPhoto("http://192.168.1.5/doorcam/picture.jpg", "Door Camera", "user", "mypassword")
end

To send a base64 jpeg or png image:

telegram.rules

rule "Send telegram with base64 image and caption"
when
    Item Light_GF_Living_Table changed
then
    val telegramAction = getActions("telegram","telegram:telegramBot:2b155b22")
    // image as base64 string
    var String base64Image = "iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAEAAAABACAMAAACdt4HsAAAAS1BMVEUAAABAQEA9QUc7P0Y0OD88QEY+QUhmaW7c3N3w8PBlaG0+QUjb29w5PUU3O0G+vsigoas6P0WfoKo4O0I9QUdkZ2w9Qkg+QkkkSUnT3FKbAAAAGXRSTlMACJbx//CV9v//9pT/7Ur//+z/SfD2kpMHrnfDaAAAAGhJREFUeAHt1bUBAzAMRFGZmcL7LxpOalN5r/evLIlgGwBgXMhxSjP64sa6cdYH+hLWzYiKvqSbI4kQeEt5PlBealsMFIkAAgi8HNriOLcjduLTafWwBB9n3p8v/+Ma1Mxxvd4IAGCzB4xDPuBRkEZiAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC"
    telegramAction.sendTelegramPhoto(base64Image, "battery of motion sensor is empty")

    // image as base64 string in data URI scheme
    var String base64ImageDataURI = "data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAEAAAABACAMAAACdt4HsAAAAS1BMVEUAAABAQEA9QUc7P0Y0OD88QEY+QUhmaW7c3N3w8PBlaG0+QUjb29w5PUU3O0G+vsigoas6P0WfoKo4O0I9QUdkZ2w9Qkg+QkkkSUnT3FKbAAAAGXRSTlMACJbx//CV9v//9pT/7Ur//+z/SfD2kpMHrnfDaAAAAGhJREFUeAHt1bUBAzAMRFGZmcL7LxpOalN5r/evLIlgGwBgXMhxSjP64sa6cdYH+hLWzYiKvqSbI4kQeEt5PlBealsMFIkAAgi8HNriOLcjduLTafWwBB9n3p8v/+Ma1Mxxvd4IAGCzB4xDPuBRkEZiAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC"
    telegramAction.sendTelegramPhoto(base64ImageDataURI, "battery of motion sensor is empty")
end

To send an image that resides on the local computer file system:

telegram.rules

rule "Send telegram with local image and caption"
when
    Item Light_GF_Living_Table changed
then
    val telegramAction = getActions("telegram","telegram:telegramBot:2b155b22")
    telegramAction.sendTelegramPhoto("file://C:/mypicture.jpg", "sent from openHAB")
end

To send an image based on an Image Item:

telegram.rules

rule "Send telegram with Image Item image and caption"
when
    Item Webcam_Image changed
then
    val telegramAction = getActions("telegram","telegram:telegramBot:2b155b22")
    telegramAction.sendTelegramPhoto(Webcam_Image.state.toFullString, "sent from openHAB")
end

To receive a message and react on that:

telegram.items

String telegramMessage "Telegram Message" { channel = "telegram:telegramBot:2b155b22:lastMessageText" }

telegram.rules

rule "Receive telegram"
when
    Item telegramMessage received update "lights off"
then
    gLights.sendCommand(OFF)
end

To send a question with two alternatives and have the bot handle the reply:

telegram.items

String telegramReplyId "Telegram Reply Id" { channel = "telegram:telegramBot:2b155b22:replyId" }

telegram.rules

rule "Send telegram with question"
when
    Item Presence changed to OFF
then
    val telegramAction = getActions("telegram","telegram:telegramBot:2b155b22")
    telegramAction.sendTelegramQuery("No one is at home, but some lights are still on. Do you want me to turn off the lights?", "Reply_Lights", "Yes", "No")
end


rule "Reply handler for lights"
when
    Item telegramReplyId received update Reply_Lights
then
    val telegramAction = getActions("telegram","telegram:telegramBot:2b155b22")

    if (telegramMessage.state.toString == "Yes")
    {
        gLights.sendCommand(OFF)
        telegramAction.sendTelegramAnswer(telegramReplyId.state.toString, "Ok, lights are *off* now.")
    }
    else
    {
        telegramAction.sendTelegramAnswer(telegramReplyId.state.toString, "Ok, I'll leave them *on*.")
    }
end

Caught a mistake or want to contribute to the documentation? Edit this page on GitHub (opens new window)