I built a Telegram bot and now I’m struggling to obtain the chat ID needed for it to post messages in a group. I added the bot to my group and visited the update endpoint, but the response I received looked like this:
{
"status": "success",
"payload": []
}
Despite removing and re-adding the bot several times, I still cannot fetch a valid chat ID.
I had a similar issue when trying to retrieve updates from my Telegram bot in a group. In my case, the problem was that the bot hadn’t actually interacted with any message in the group. Telegram bots only pick up messages when they are actively involved. I solved it by sending a test message in the group and then calling the update endpoint. It also helped to check the bot’s privacy mode settings and adjust them if needed. This allowed the bot to capture the message and then return the correct chat ID in the update response.
Based on my experience, if your update endpoint is returning an empty result, it could be due to the bot not actually receiving any messages that trigger updates. For instance, in my case, I discovered that excluding a working webhook could lead to messages not being processed correctly. I resolved it by ensuring I was either using getUpdates exclusively or properly setting up the webhook. It is also critical to double-check group permission settings to ensure the bot is allowed to read messages. Taking these steps helped me finally obtain the chat ID.
hey, try sendin a message directly in the group. i found that sometimes telegram delays updtes if the bot isnt actively used. check your token also in case that´s causing issues.
In my experience, one issue that I encountered was that no updates were coming through because of a combination of group settings and the bot configuration. I eventually discovered that while adding the bot to the group was necessary, it wasn’t enough on its own. I had to ensure that the bot’s privacy settings were disabled in BotFather so that it could actually process group messages. It also helped to manually trigger the bot by sending it a command rather than just a plain message. In my case, once I used a command along with proper user interaction within the group, the update endpoint started returning details and the chat ID became available.
In a similar situation, I found that another common hurdle is how the bot interacts within the group. Although adding the bot is mandatory, it sometimes fails to process updates if it hasn’t engaged in a command-like interaction rather than just a regular message. I resolved this by sending a command directly to the bot, which helped initiate its response system. Additionally, ensuring that privacy settings were adequately adjusted in BotFather was crucial. This combination enabled the bot to actively recognize and process the updates, ultimately returning the chat ID in the payload.