How to upload file to Telegram bot using curl command

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1

I’m having trouble sending a document through my Telegram bot using curl. When I try to upload a file, I keep getting an error message saying there’s no document in the request.

Here’s what I’m currently using:

curl -F type=file -F data=@/home/user/myfile.pdf \
     -H "Content-Type:multipart/form-data" \
     "https://api.telegram.org/bot123456:ABC-DEF1234ghIkl-zyx57W2v1u123ew11/sendDocument?chat_id=987654321"

The response I get back is:

{"ok":false,"error_code":400,"description":"[Error]: Bad Request: there is no document in request"}

I’m not sure what’s wrong with my curl syntax. The file exists at the specified path and I have the correct bot token and chat ID. Has anyone encountered this issue before? What’s the proper way to structure the curl command for uploading files to Telegram bots?

2

Had the same problem when I started with Telegram bots. Your curl command uses the wrong parameter name - you need document instead of data. Also, drop the Content-Type header since curl handles multipart uploads automatically. Here’s the fixed command: bash curl -F document=@/home/user/myfile.pdf \ -F chat_id=987654321 \ "https://api.telegram.org/bot123456:ABC-DEF1234ghIkl-zyx57W2v1u123ew11/sendDocument" I’d also move chat_id into the form data - it’s more reliable that way. And you don’t need the type=file parameter.

3

yeah, the document param is crucial, but check your file path permissions too. I’ve been burned by this - even when the file exists, curl sometimes can’t access it. Run ls -la /home/user/myfile.pdf first to verify it’s readable. also test with a smaller file in case there’s a size limit.

4

The issue lies in the parameters you’re using. The ‘sendDocument’ method of the Telegram API requires the ‘document’ parameter for file uploads instead of ‘data’. To resolve your problem, you can adjust your curl command like this:

curl -F document=@/home/user/myfile.pdf \
     "https://api.telegram.org/bot123456:ABC-DEF1234ghIkl-zyx57W2v1u123ew11/sendDocument?chat_id=987654321"

It’s important to remove ‘type=file’ since curl automatically sets the content type when using the ‘-F’ flag. The ‘@’ indicates to curl that it should read the file from the specified path, and ‘document=’ is what the Telegram API expects.