What causes my Telegram bot to periodically disconnect?

Other Questions Telegram bot
1

I’m having trouble with my Telegram bot. It’s set up to respond to user commands through a Sidekiq worker, but it keeps going offline without any obvious reason. I have to restart the worker each time it disconnects. There are no errors in the Sidekiq logs to point me in the right direction, so I’m at a loss as to what might be happening. I’m looking for suggestions on what might be causing the disconnections and tips on where to start troubleshooting.

Here’s a snippet of my code for reference:

class BotWorker
  include Sidekiq::Job
  sidekiq_options queue: :main, retry: 3

  def perform
    puts 'Bot is starting up'
    
    ApiClient.new(ENV['BOT_KEY']).listen do |msg|
      if msg.sender.handle
        # Handle message here
      end
    end
  end
end

Any ideas on how I can prevent these disconnections or track down the issue?

2

hey man, i had this problem too. it drove me nuts! turns out it was my server’s firewall being weird. check ur firewall settings and make sure its not blocking telegram’s ip addresses. also, try adding some logging to see when the disconnect happens. that helped me pinpoint the issue. good luck!

3

I’ve dealt with similar Telegram bot disconnection issues before. One thing that helped me was implementing a heartbeat mechanism. Basically, you send a periodic ping to Telegram’s servers to keep the connection alive. Here’s a quick example of how you could modify your code:

def perform
  puts 'Bot is starting up'
  
  loop do
    begin
      client = ApiClient.new(ENV['BOT_KEY'])
      client.listen do |msg|
        if msg.sender.handle
          # Handle message here
        end
        
        # Send a heartbeat every 5 minutes
        if Time.now - @last_heartbeat > 300
          client.send_message(chat_id: ENV['ADMIN_CHAT_ID'], text: 'Heartbeat')
          @last_heartbeat = Time.now
        end
      end
    rescue => e
      puts "Error: #{e.message}. Reconnecting in 10 seconds..."
      sleep 10
    end
  end
end

This approach helps maintain the connection and automatically restarts if something goes wrong. Also, consider upgrading your Ruby version if you haven’t recently, as older versions can sometimes have issues with long-running processes.

4

I’ve encountered similar issues with Telegram bots. The problem might be related to network timeouts or Telegram’s server-side disconnects. To improve reliability, consider implementing a keep-alive mechanism or using a library that handles reconnections automatically.

One approach is to wrap your bot logic in a loop that catches exceptions and restarts the connection. You could also look into using the ‘telegram-bot-ruby’ gem, which has built-in reconnection handling.

Additionally, make sure your server’s firewall isn’t blocking outgoing connections. Sometimes, intermittent network issues can cause disconnects without leaving obvious error logs.

Lastly, check if you’re hitting any API rate limits. Telegram has restrictions on message frequency, which could lead to disconnections if exceeded.