I’m having trouble with my Telegram bot setup and getting an error about the bot token not being defined. Here’s what I’m working with:
import os
import telebot
BOT_TOKEN = os.getenv('BOT_KEY')
client = telebot.TeleBot(BOT_TOKEN)
@client.message_handler(commands=['start'])
def greet_user(msg):
client.reply_to(msg, "Hello there!")
client.polling()
The error message says Exception: Bot token is not defined when I try to run the script. I have my token stored in a .env file and I’m trying to load it with os.getenv(). The bot was created through BotFather and I copied the token correctly. What could be causing this issue with the token not being recognized?
just hardcode the token to see if everything works. swap BOT_TOKEN = os.getenv('BOT_KEY') with BOT_TOKEN = 'your_actual_token' for now. if the bot starts fine, then it’s an env issue, not your code.
I faced a similar issue recently. The problem stems from os.getenv() not loading variables from a .env file directly. You need to utilize the python-dotenv package to read the contents of your .env file. After installing it with pip install python-dotenv, ensure you include from dotenv import load_dotenv and call load_dotenv() at the beginning of your script. This will ensure the environment variables are loaded correctly, allowing os.getenv('BOT_KEY') to retrieve the token properly. Also, verify that your .env file is located in the same directory where your script is being executed and that the variable name is spelled correctly.
Check that your variable names match exactly - you’re using os.getenv('BOT_KEY') but your .env file needs BOT_KEY=your_token_here, not BOT_TOKEN or TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN. I wasted hours on this exact mistake once. Print the BOT_TOKEN value right after retrieving it to see if it’s actually loading. If it prints None, the environment variable isn’t found. Also, make sure there’s no spaces around the equals sign in your .env file and no quotes around the token unless they’re part of the actual token.