In the world of online communication, Telegram stands out as a popular messaging platform. If you're a developer, it might be useful to know how to easily send a message to Telegram from the code. This article will show you 5 easy ways to do it using PHP.
Preconditions:
- PHP installed and curl extension enabled
- Public Telegram channel created
- Telegram bot created using BotFather
- Bot added to channel administrators
Telegram API
Telegram provides a variety of API endpoints and methods, which can be found in the documentation.
Today we're gonna focus on the sendMessage endpoint. It sends some text {TEXT} to the particular channel {CHANNEL_ID} by the bot {BOT_API_TOKEN}
https://api.telegram.org/bot{BOT_API_TOKEN}/sendMessage?chat_id={CHANNEL_ID}&text={TEXT}
There are a lot of ways to call this endpoint and send a message to the channel inside a PHP project. We will cover 5 of them.
HTTP request with cURL
Functional style
<?php
$botApiToken = 'your bot api token';
$channelId ='your channel id';
$text = 'Hello, I am from PHP!';
$query = http_build_query([
'chat_id' => $channelId,
'text' => $text,
]);
$url = "https://api.telegram.org/bot{$botApiToken}/sendMessage?{$query}";
$curl = curl_init();
curl_setopt_array($curl, array(
CURLOPT_URL => $url,
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => 'GET',
));
curl_exec($curl);
curl_close($curl);
OOP style
Installation
composer require curl/curl
Usage
<?php
require 'vendor/autoload.php';
$botApiToken = 'your bot api token';
$channelId ='your channel id';
$text = 'Hello, I am from PHP!';
$query = http_build_query([
'chat_id' => $channelId,
'text' => $text,
]);
$url = "https://api.telegram.org/bot{$botApiToken}/sendMessage?{$query}";
$curl = new \Curl\Curl();
$curl->get($url);
One line magic using file_get_contents
<?php
$botApiToken = 'your bot api token';
$channelId = 'your channel id';
$text = 'Hello, I am from PHP file_get_contents!';
$query = http_build_query([
'chat_id' => $channelId,
'text' => $text,
]);
$url = "https://api.telegram.org/bot{$botApiToken}/sendMessage?{$query}";
file_get_contents($url);
Symfony HTTP client
Symfony is one of the most popular PHP frameworks. It provides a lot of different components out of the box and one of them is HTTP Client. It allows you to make HTTP requests easily.
Installation
composer require symfony/http-client
Standalone
<?php
require 'vendor/autoload.php';
use Symfony\Component\HttpClient\HttpClient;
$botApiToken = 'your bot api token';
$channelId ='your channel id';
$text = 'Hello, I am from Symfony HTTP Client!';
$client = HttpClient::create([
'base_uri' => 'https://api.telegram.org',
]);
$client->request('GET', "/bot{$botApiToken}/sendMessage", [
'query' => [
'chat_id' => $channelId,
'text' => $text,
],
]);
Inside Symfony app
Prepare scoped client inside config/packages/framework.yaml
framework:
http_client:
scoped_clients:
telegram.client:
base_uri: 'https://api.telegram.org'
And use it inside your service
<?php
namespace App;
use Symfony\Contracts\HttpClient\HttpClientInterface;
class YourService
{
public function __construct(
private readonly HttpClientInterface $telegramClient,
)
{
}
public function sendMessage(string $text): void
{
$botApiToken = 'your bot api token';
$channelId ='your channel id';
$this->telegramClient->request('GET', "/bot{$botApiToken}/sendMessage", [
'query' => [
'chat_id' => $channelId,
'text' => $text,
],
]);
}
}
Symfony Telegram Notifier
Another Symfony component that can send a message to the Telegram channel is Telegram Notifier.
Installation
composer require symfony/telegram-notifier
Standalone
<?php
require 'vendor/autoload.php';
use Symfony\Component\Notifier\Bridge\Telegram\TelegramTransport;
use Symfony\Component\Notifier\Chatter;
use Symfony\Component\Notifier\Message\ChatMessage;
$botApiToken = 'your bot api token';
$channelId ='your channel id';
$text = 'Hello, I am from Symfony Telegram Notifier!';
$telegramTransport = new TelegramTransport($botApiToken, $channelId);
$chatter = new Chatter($telegramTransport);
$chatMessage = new ChatMessage($text);
$chatter->send($chatMessage);
Inside Symfony app
Configure notifier chatter transport inside
config/packages/framework.yaml
parameters:
env(TELEGRAM_DSN): 'telegram://BOT_API_TOKEN@default?channel=CHANNEL_ID'
framework:
notifier:
chatter_transports:
telegram: '%env(TELEGRAM_DSN)%'
And use it inside your service
<?php
namespace App;
use Symfony\Component\Notifier\ChatterInterface;
use Symfony\Component\Notifier\Message\ChatMessage;
class YourService
{
public function __construct(
private readonly ChatterInterface $telegramChatter
)
{
}
public function sendMessage(string $text): void
{
$this->telegramChatter->send(new ChatMessage($text));
}
}
Telegram Bot SDK
Telegram Bot SDK lets you develop Telegram Bots in PHP easily! Supports Laravel framework and comes with addons to enhance your bot development experience.
Installation
composer require irazasyed/telegram-bot-sdk
Standalone
<?php
require 'vendor/autoload.php';
use Telegram\Bot\Api;
$botApiToken = 'your bot api token';
$channelId ='your channel id';
$telegram = new Api($botApiToken);
$telegram->sendMessage([
'chat_id' => $channelId,
'text' => $text,
]);
Inside Laravel app
php artisan vendor:publish --tag="telegram-config"
<?php
namespace App;
use Telegram\Bot\Api;
class YourService
{
public function __construct(private readonly Api $telegram)
{
}
public function sendMessage(string $channelId, string $text): void
{
$this->telegram->sendMessage([
'chat_id' => $channelId,
'text' => $text,
]);
}
}
Summary
There are many ways to achieve the same goal. With so many options available, there's no definitive "right" way to send a Telegram message using PHP. The choice you make depends on your needs and the technologies you're working with. This article shows five simple ways to send messages to Telegram using PHP, in fact there are many more than five and it's up to you which one to use.
Top comments (4)
Great post! Well done!
Thanks a lot for the feedback!
Can I programmatically send the message to a STRANGE user, who has no my/(my bot) contact in his contacts list?
I don't think it's possible, but I'm not sure. It should be checked with the Telegram API docs.
One of the prerequisites mentioned in the article is "Bot added to channel administrators", which means that the bot should be given write permission before sending messages.
I think Telegram does not offer the option to send messages to random people, as this can lead to uncontrolled spam. Again - I'm not sure, I haven't checked.