Push notifications from server with Telegram Bot API

I needed a way to keep myself updated with what happens on the server (new user signup, daily stats with visitors, new user send a message to me thru contact form etc.).

You can do that with just email, but you can also do it with the help of Telegram Bot API.

Install telegram on your phone. Once installed, search for BotFather - click start and then type /newbot (follow the steps there, save safely the private bot token for the api). After the new bot is created search it and start a conversation with it (this will help you get chat_id which we will need later).

After your first conversation with the bot get the chat_id:

curl -X GET 'https://api.telegram.org/botTOKEN:FROM-BOTFATHER/getUpdates'

The response will look similar to this:

{
  "ok": true,
  "result": [
    {
      "update_id": 123123123123,
      "message": {
        "message_id": 124,
        "from": {
          "id": CHAT_ID,
          "is_bot": false,
          "first_name": "NAME",
          "last_name": "NAME",
          "language_code": "en"
        },
        "chat": {
          "id": "HERE-IS-CHAT_ID-YOU-NEED",
          "first_name": "NAME",
          "last_name": "NAME",
          "type": "private"
        },
        "date": 1718539209,
        "text": "/start",
        "entities": [
          {
            "offset": 0,
            "length": 6,
            "type": "bot_command"
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  ]
}

Take chat_id value from: HERE-IS-CHAT_ID-YOU-NEED (see up).

Nice, now save CHAT_ID and TELEGRAM_API_TOKEN in .env file (or somewhere else just don't push it to a public repo).

Here is the code to send push notifications (messages from the server to your phone) at each 10 seconds.

import time
import requests
from config import cfg


def server_push_notifications():
    try:
        while True:
            url = f"https://api.telegram.org/bot{cfg.TELEGRAM_API_TOKEN}/sendMessage"
            response = requests.post(
                url=url,
                params={'chat_id': cfg.CHAT_ID, 'text': 'All system are ok.', 'parse_mode': 'Markdown'}
            )
            print(url, response.json())
            time.sleep(10)
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        return 


if __name__ == "__main__":
    server_push_notifications()

As you can see the base is just a POST request to telegram api with chat_id and text as body. What you send as a message is up to you.

For something more serious I would recommend using scheduler, but I don't see why a barebones while loop with a time.sleep won't do the same thing.

Comments

[Fyodor]

Interesting… A couple of questions (if you will of course — sorry in advance if that’s inappropriate):

1. What kind of identifier this chat id is here?
2. Is it specific to a chat instance?
3. Will it be the same if I open my Telegram acc from mobile and desktop?
4. Is there a way to provide some authorization mechanism with this simple approach? Like if I want to give access to my server’s bot to my peer? Do I need to get the chat id from them as well?

[Alin Climente]

No worries.

1. After you create the bot you need to "chat" with it -> a chat_id number will be created between you and the bot;
2. yes, only between you and the bot -> others who will connect to the bot can't see what the bot sends (tested on 2 phones/accounts);
3. Yes, same on desktop and mobile on same account;
4. Yes, the bot token is recommended to be hidden under an apikey you can control (this is what I created for my sites: github.com/ClimenteA/telegram-push...). Not sure about multiple users for the same bot chat conversation. I didn't worked a lot on telegram bots - just enough to create what I needed. Checkout Telegram Channels.

Checkout this project: ntfy.sh/ (can do the same thing better and easier - I have not played with it yet.)

Good luck!

[Intel inside]

I had a similar script running and since last week isn't working.. getting a connection error coming from the request module.. my guess is something changed on Telegram side (URL maybe..), by any chance are you having the same issue and/or do you know what changed?

[Alin Climente]

My script has now about 2 months since is running, no issues yet. I don't think something changed. Maybe your script was more complex than mine. Feel free to use it if it fits your needs: github.com/ClimenteA/telegram-push...