How to send long messages with a Telegram bot using PHP?

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1

Hey folks, I’m struggling with my Telegram bot. It was working fine for short messages, but now I’m trying to send longer texts from my database and it’s not cooperating. I keep getting a HTTP 400 Bad Request error.

I’ve tried using file_get_contents(), but no luck. Here’s a snippet of what I’m working with:

function sendMessage($chatID, $message) {
    $url = 'https://api.telegram.org/bot' . BOT_TOKEN . '/sendMessage';
    $params = [
        'chat_id' => $chatID,
        'text' => $message
    ];
    
    $ch = curl_init($url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $params);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
    
    $result = curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);
    
    return $result;
}

Any ideas on how to fix this? I’m pretty new to PHP and Telegram bots, so any help would be awesome. Thanks!

2

hey ethan, i’ve dealt with this before. telegram has a message length limit (4096 chars). try splitting ur long messages into chunks. use mb_substr() to break it up and send each part separately. that should fix ur issue without changing much code. good luck!

3

I encountered a similar issue when working on a Telegram bot project. The solution lies in message chunking. Telegram’s API has a 4096 character limit per message, so for longer texts you need to split your message into smaller parts. Below is an example modification of your function:

function sendMessage($chatID, $message) {
    $maxLength = 4000;
    $messages = str_split($message, $maxLength);
    
    foreach ($messages as $part) {
        $url = 'https://api.telegram.org/bot' . BOT_TOKEN . '/sendMessage';
        $params = [
            'chat_id' => $chatID,
            'text' => $part
        ];
        
        $ch = curl_init($url);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $params);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
        
        $result = curl_exec($ch);
        curl_close($ch);
    }
    
    return $result;
}

This approach should resolve your HTTP 400 error by effectively handling long messages in chunks.

4

I’ve been in your shoes, Ethan. When I first started with Telegram bots, the character limit caught me off guard too. Here’s what worked for me: Instead of sending one big message, I implemented a function to split long texts into smaller chunks. It’s not just about using str_split() though - you want to make sure you’re not cutting words in half. I created a custom function that respects word boundaries. It splits the message into parts, each under 4000 characters, and sends them sequentially. This approach has been rock-solid for me, handling everything from short updates to lengthy database extracts. One tip: add a slight delay between sending each chunk to avoid hitting Telegram’s rate limits. A sleep(1) between sends should do the trick. Remember, when dealing with APIs, it’s always good to check their documentation for limitations like this. It can save you a lot of headaches down the road.