Java: Uploading files to Telegram Bot using sendDocument API method

Other Questions Telegram bot
1

Hey everyone! I’m trying to figure out how to send files through the Telegram Bot API using Java. I’ve been looking at the sendDocument method but I’m not sure how to handle the multipart/form-data posting.

Here’s what I’ve got so far:

HttpClient httpClient = HttpClientBuilder.create().build();
HttpPost request = new HttpPost("https://api.telegram.org/bot" + BOT_TOKEN + "/sendDocument");

MultipartEntityBuilder entityBuilder = MultipartEntityBuilder.create();
entityBuilder.addBinaryBody("document", new File("path/to/file.txt"));
entityBuilder.addTextBody("chat_id", CHAT_ID);

request.setEntity(entityBuilder.build());

HttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(request);

Can anyone help me understand if I’m on the right track? Or if there’s a better way to do this? Thanks!

2

I’ve implemented file uploads to Telegram bots using the Telegram Bot API in Java, and I can confirm that your approach with HttpClient and MultipartEntityBuilder is on the right track. However, I’d suggest a couple of improvements:

  1. Set the content type explicitly:
    request.setHeader(“Content-Type”, “multipart/form-data”);

  2. Add error handling and response parsing:
    try {
    HttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(request);
    int statusCode = response.getStatusLine().getStatusCode();
    if (statusCode == 200) {
    // Parse the JSON response
    } else {
    // Handle error
    }
    } catch (IOException e) {
    // Handle network errors
    }

These changes should make your implementation more robust and easier to debug if issues arise.

3

I’ve had success using the TelegramBots library for Java when working with the Telegram Bot API. It simplifies a lot of the low-level HTTP handling and multipart requests.

Here’s a snippet that worked for me:

SendDocument sendDocumentRequest = new SendDocument();
sendDocumentRequest.setChatId(chatId);
sendDocumentRequest.setDocument(new File("path/to/your/file.txt"));
try {
    bot.execute(sendDocumentRequest);
} catch (TelegramApiException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

This approach is more straightforward and handles the multipart/form-data posting for you. Make sure to add the TelegramBots dependency to your project. It’s been reliable in my experience and saves a lot of time dealing with the raw API calls.

4

yo dawg, i’ve used apache httpclient for this before. ur code looks pretty close! make sure u set the right content-type header tho. also, u might wanna add some error handling for when the file isn’t found or the api call fails. good luck with ur bot!