Telegram bot not displaying all items from JSON array

[Tom42Gamer]

I have a telegram bot that should show menu items from a JSON file when someone types a command. The JSON contains multiple food items but my bot only shows the last one instead of all of them.

Here’s my code:

$data = file_get_contents('https://restaurant-api.com/items.json');
$items = json_decode($data);
foreach ($items as $item)
{
   $message = $item->category;
   $message = $message." - ".$item->name;
}

When I run this same code in a regular PHP script it works perfectly and shows all menu items. But inside my telegram bot it only displays one item. How can I make the bot show the complete list of items from the JSON data?

[Claire29]

ur just overwriting $message w each loop. init it as empty string b4 the loop: $message = ""; then use $message .= $item->category . " - " . $item->name . "\n"; to keep everything.

[Tom_89Paint]

Your issue lies with how you’re handling the $message variable within the loop. Since you are overwriting it each time, only the last item is displayed. To fix this, initialize $message as an empty string before the loop starts. Then, use .= to append each item to $message. This way, you’ll construct the full list of menu items, which you can send to your Telegram bot once the loop is complete.

[JumpingMountain]

You’re overwriting the same variable each time instead of building up your message. I encountered this exact bug when I made my first bot last year. Set $message = ''; before your loop starts. Then inside the loop, use $message .= $item->category . " - " . $item->name . "\n"; instead. The .= appends to what’s already there rather than wiping it clean. Once the loop finishes, send that built-up $message to Telegram and you’ll get all your items.