I’m looking to have my Telegram bot mimic the behavior of actively typing a message. In the chat, users should see an indicator resembling a typing status. I’m currently working with Python’s aiogram framework, yet I’m also open to methods that use the native Telegram API. Any advice or code snippets that illustrate how to achieve this effect in a simple and efficient way would be greatly appreciated.
Considering my experience with aiogram and Telegram API, the most straightforward method to simulate a typing indicator is by using the sendChatAction endpoint with the action set to ‘typing’. In practice, you can call this method before sending your actual message. Note that the typing indicator typically shows for a maximum duration of 5 seconds, so for longer simulated typing durations you might need to send the action multiple times using a loop. I found that structuring your code to refresh the typing state during longer operations provides a smoother user experience. Ensure to handle exceptions in case the API call fails.
In my experience, achieving a typing indicator on Telegram using a bot with aiogram is most reliably done through the sendChatAction method. I made sure to wrap this call within an asynchronous loop if the response wasn’t immediate, so that the typing status would refresh until the actual message was ready to be sent. One challenge was handling the timing because the indicator only persists for a few seconds. Implementing periodic calls to update this status worked well, and error handling was essential to manage any unexpected API failures during longer tasks.