Telegram bot truncates URL at ampersand symbol when sending messages

Other Questions Telegram bot
1

I’m having trouble with my Telegram bot. It’s supposed to send a full URL to a channel, but it keeps cutting off the message at the ‘&’ symbol. I’ve tried using HTML entities and removing parse mode, but nothing seems to work. Here’s what I’m doing:

url = f"https://api.telegram.org/{bot_token}/sendMessage?chat_id={channel_id}&text={movie_url}&parse_mode=HTML"
response = requests.get(url)

movie_url = f"https://example.com/search?year={release_year}&rating={min_rating}&genre={movie_genre}"

The bot only sends the URL up to the first ‘&’ in movie_url. How can I make it send the entire link without truncating? Any ideas would be appreciated!

2

hey man, i had the same problem. try using url encoding for your movie_url. something like this:

from urllib.parse import quote_plus

encoded_url = quote_plus(movie_url)

this should fix it. let me know if it works for u!

3

I’ve dealt with this issue in my Telegram bot projects. The problem is likely due to improper URL encoding. Instead of constructing the URL manually, you should use the requests library’s built-in parameter handling. When you pass parameters via the params argument, requests will automatically handle URL encoding, which prevents the truncation of URLs containing special characters like ‘&’.

Here’s a reliable approach:

import requests

url = f’https://api.telegram.org/{bot_token}/sendMessage’
params = {
‘chat_id’: channel_id,
‘text’: movie_url,
‘parse_mode’: ‘HTML’
}
response = requests.get(url, params=params)

This solution has worked well for me in similar projects and should resolve the truncation issue. Double-check that your bot token and channel id are correct if you continue to experience problems.

4

I’ve encountered this issue before, and it can be frustrating. The problem lies in how you’re constructing the URL for the API call. Instead of including the parameters in the URL itself, try using the params argument in the requests.get() function. Here’s how I solved it:

import requests

params = {
    'chat_id': channel_id,
    'text': movie_url,
    'parse_mode': 'HTML'
}

url = f'https://api.telegram.org/{bot_token}/sendMessage'
response = requests.get(url, params=params)

This approach properly encodes the parameters, including any special characters like ‘&’, ensuring the full URL is sent without truncation. It’s a more robust method and has worked consistently for me across various Telegram bot projects. Give it a try and let me know if it resolves your issue!