/telegram-cli

CLI to send messages to a specific Telegram chat.

Primary LanguageC#

Telegram CLI

This is a simple project to send messages to a Telegram chat using a CLI.

The motivation was: I hate waiting for long processes to run, so I can pipe the result of the command to my telegram with this CLI and get notified when it's done, having a way to glance at the result. Meanwhile, I can do other things.

If the message is bigger than what is allowed by Telegram (4096), it will be split into multiple messages.

Pre-requisites

To work, we need two environment variables: TELEGRAM_API_TOKEN and TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID.

Setting Environment Variables on Windows

  1. Search for 'Environment Variables' in your Start Menu.
  2. Click on 'Edit the system environment variables.'
  3. Click on 'Environment Variables' at the bottom right corner.
  4. Under 'System Variables', click on the 'New' button.
  5. In the 'Variable name' field, enter TELEGRAM_API_TOKEN and in the 'Variable value' field, enter your telegram API token. Click 'OK'.
  6. Repeat the process for the TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID variable.

These changes will take effect the next time you open a command prompt.

Setting Environment Variables on Linux

  1. Open your terminal.
  2. Use the export command to add your environment variables. Replace your_telegram_api_token and your_telegram_chat_id with your actual values: 
    export TELEGRAM_API_TOKEN=your_telegram_api_token
export TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID=your_telegram_chat_id
  3. To make these changes permanent, add these lines to your ~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_profile, or ~/.profile file, and then source it: 
    echo 'export TELEGRAM_API_TOKEN=your_telegram_api_token' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'export TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID=your_telegram_chat_id' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Setting Environment Variables on MacOS

  1. Open your terminal.
  2. Use the export command to add your environment variables. Replace your_telegram_api_token and your_telegram_chat_id with your actual values: 
    export TELEGRAM_API_TOKEN=your_telegram_api_token
export TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID=your_telegram_chat_id
  3. To make these changes permanent, add these lines to your ~/.bash_profile or ~/.zshrc file (depending on your default shell), and then source it: 
    echo 'export TELEGRAM_API_TOKEN=your_telegram_api_token' >> ~/.bash_profile
echo 'export TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID=your_telegram_chat_id' >> ~/.bash_profile
source ~/.bash_profile

For zsh:

echo 'export TELEGRAM_API_TOKEN=your_telegram_api_token' >> ~/.zshrc
echo 'export TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID=your_telegram_chat_id' >> ~/.zshrc
source ~/.zshrc

Please replace your_telegram_api_token and your_telegram_chat_id with your actual values. The commands should be run without the angle brackets.

How to use

Multiple arguments

tme.exe Hello World

Will send:

Hello World

One argument

tme.exe "Hello World"

Will send:

Hello World

Piped data

dir | tme.exe

Will send:

 Volume in drive C is vault
 Volume Serial Number is FX42-6667

 Directory of C:\path\to\this\project\Telegram.Cli\Telegram.Cli\bin\Debug\net6.0

23/05/2023  22:59    <DIR>          .
23/05/2023  22:59    <DIR>          ..
23/05/2023  22:59               401 tme.deps.json
23/05/2023  23:03            14.336 tme.dll
23/05/2023  23:03           148.992 tme.exe
23/05/2023  23:03            12.660 tme.pdb
23/05/2023  22:59               147 tme.runtimeconfig.json
             5 File(s)          176.536 bytes
             2 Dir(s) 9.889.064.771.584 bytes free