Send a telegram from a CLI

Send messages from a linux shell

Requirements

You should have curl installed

Installation

On your Telegram client search (global) for BotFather
Send it the command /newbot and start a conversation with it, namely:
- Choose a bot name (ex: Alerts)
- Choose a username ending with Bot (ex: somethingBot)
- If everything is ok it will return a congratulations messages which includes a HTTP API Token. Something like this 123456:ABC-DEF1234ghIkl-zyx57W2v1u123ew11
- Save that Token to a private and secure place
- Go to the Global search again, and search for your boot (ex: somethingBot)
- Send it the command /start
- Send a message to it (ex: Hello)

Now open a shell and clone this git repository

git clone https://github.com/jvverde/send-telegram ${HOME}/telegram

Go to ${HOME}/telegram

cd ${HOME}/telegram

Open another bash shell (by secure reasons)

bash

Set an environment variable TOKEN="123456:ABC-DEF1234ghIkl-zyx57W2v1u123ew11" (use the token saved above)

TOKEN="POST_YOUR_TOKEN_HERE"

Check the new messages on your bot (You should have at least one if you had sent a message Hello on previous step)

curl https://api.telegram.org/bot$TOKEN/getUpdates

You shoud receive a json object. Look for the something like this

...,"chat":{"id":822330591,"first_name":...

( If you only obtain a message like this {"ok":true,"result":[]} it means you haven't send a message yet. Go to client and send a Hello messages to your bot and try again )

Take note of the value on field id of chat and then copy .env.example to .env

cp .env.example to .env

Edit .env with your prefered editor

vim .env

And set the variables TOKEN and CHAT_ID with the previous obtained values.

Save the .env

Now test it by send a Hello World message

./send-telegram.sh "Hello World"

If everything is ok you should have received a Hello World on you telegram client

Now exit from you bash tin order o discart TOKEN variable from environment

exit

Send a second messages

./send-telegram.sh "My second message"

Thats it!