Telegram Binding: Address individual chat-IDs (.things)

[Maex (Mæx)]

I was using the Telegram Action to send Messages from one bot to multiple chats individually.
But now I’d like to use the “Query” function to get responses to those messages.
I installed the Telegram-Binding and edited the telegram.things fire, I created:

telegram.things

Thing telegram:telegramBot:telegram001 [chatIds="chatid1", "chatid1", botToken="bottoken", parseMode="Markdown"]

chatid1, chatid2 and bottoken were changed out with my peripherals

Now, in the `telegram.rules`-file, I would like to send my query to only one of those chat-ids

telegram.rules

rule "dev_switch001"
  when
    Item dev_switch001 changed
  then
    getActions("telegram","telegram:telegramBot:telegram001").sendTelegramQuery("Test Question", "Reply_Lights", "Yes", "No")
end

This will send the query to both chatid1 and chatid2

How can I adress the specific chat-id from the .things in my .rules?

[Bruce_Osborne]

But now I’d like to use the “Query” function to get responses to those messages.

What have you researched & tried?

We do not have the volunteer resources here to provide & support complete solutions. We are here to help you with your configuration.

[Maex (Mæx)]

I researched here:

Things | openHAB
Telegram - Bindings | openHAB

but all those examples lead into sending the query to both given chat-ids


I also tried to split the two chat-ids into two different things. But the openhab-log tells me to not create two things out of one binding.

So the main goal is to address chat1 with e.g. telegram:telegramBot:telegram001:chat1 and chat2 with telegram:telegramBot:telegram001:chat2
I dont think that no one else has tried to send separate queries to different telegram-chats yet.

[rossko57]

Have a play with it. Using your existing Thing with its list of chatids create and link Items to the lastMessageText and chatid channels. See what you get when a message is sent.

[Maex (Mæx)]

But this would get me the chatId, replyId and lastMessageText of the button pressed or message sent by the Telegram-user.
My problem starts with providing the user with the following buttons, called “query”:

rule "dev_switch001"
  when
    Item dev_switch001 changed
  then
    getActions("telegram","telegram:telegramBot:telegram001").sendTelegramQuery("Test Question", "Reply_Lights", "Yes", "No")
end

which, for right now, results in the following chat for both “chatid1” and “chatid2”

I just want to be able to descide, which chatId(s) the rule should send it to.

[rossko57]

Okay, I was misled by “Now I want to get responses” and assumed that meant listening.

So you’re saying the Action sending method shown here does not work?

Telegram - Bindings

[Maex (Mæx)]

It does indeed work. But there is no way to determine, which of the chatIds - declared in the .things file - the message is sent to.

So the dev_switch001-rule works perfectly fine, sending the message seen in the attached picture.
But I don’t want it to be sent to both chatIds.

[rossko57]

Okay, so what happens when you follow the example “Actions to send messages to a particular chat” and specify one chatid in your Action, as the first parameter?

sendTelegramQuery(123456L, “blah”, “bleh” …

[Maex (Mæx)]

Oh wow. That seems to work. But only with private chats and not in groups since their id starts with a -.
Thank you so much, rossko67!

Telegram - Bindings | openHAB

the parameter for the Query is missing in the official documentation.

The Soution:

rule "dev_switch001"
  when
    Item dev_switch001 changed
  then
    getActions("telegram","telegram:telegramBot:telegram001").sendTelegramQuery(chat_id_as_long, "Test Question", "Reply_Lights", "Yes", "No")
end

[rossko57]

What official documentation now?

Be useful to show how you created a Long variable - not common in rules.

Might be worth raising a github for group -chatid (if that is a sensible thing to do in this telegram usage) for an enhancement. I guess it only needs to recognize a negative number.