DEV Community

Cover image for Bash Script to Send a Message in Telegram from your Terminal!
Nathan Orris
Nathan Orris

Posted on

Bash Script to Send a Message in Telegram from your Terminal!

Have you ever wanted to send a message from your terminal? Think about how convenient that would be as a developer who works in a terminal for 60% of the time. I know for me it was a game changer! There are api's available for use with pulse sms and others but this tutorial is a quick right up on using Telegrams API.

What is Telegram?

Telegram is a cloud-based instant messaging and voice-over-IP service. It was developed by the Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov and his brother Nikolai. Telegram is available for Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and Linux, and it supports a wide range of languages.

Telegram is known for its focus on security and privacy. It offers end-to-end encryption for all messages and calls, and it allows users to create private and secret chats that are not stored on the company's servers. Telegram also offers a range of features that make it popular among users, such as the ability to send large files, create group chats with up to 200,000 members, and use bots to automate tasks.

Telegram is a free and open-source platform, and it has a large and active community of users and developers. It has become one of the most popular messaging platforms in the world, with over 500 million monthly active users. You can download it in your respective app store!

Simple Bash Script to the Rescue

To send a message in Telegram using a simple Bash script, you can use the curl command to make an HTTP POST request to the Telegram API. The API will allow you to send a message to a specified chat or user, and the message will be delivered instantly.

bin/bash/scripting doggy

Here is a simple Bash script that you can use to send a message in Telegram:

# Set the API token and chat ID
API_TOKEN="<your_api_token>"
CHAT_ID="<your_chat_id>"

# Set the message text
MESSAGE="This is a test message"

# Use the curl command to send the message
curl -s -X POST https://api.telegram.org/bot$API_TOKEN/sendMessage -d chat_id=$CHAT_ID -d text="$MESSAGE"

Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

That's it!

How to use our Script:

To use this script, you will need to replace and with the API token and chat ID of your Telegram bot and the user or group you want to send the message to, respectively. You will also need to replace This is a test message with the text of the message you want to send.

Once you have set these values, you can run the script by calling the bash command and passing the script file as an argument, like this:

bash send_telegram_message.sh

Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

paper plane flying and stuff like that my man.

What's our Script Doing?

The script will then send the message to the specified user or group on Telegram. You can use this script as a starting point and modify it to suit your specific needs. For example, you could add command-line arguments to the script to make it more flexible and allow you to specify the API token, chat ID, and message text when you run the script. You can find more detailed instructions and information about the Telegram API in the Telegram API documentation.

Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions or if you just want to chat!

NathanNOSudo

Top comments (0)