New plugin for Telegram

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@all
With Dan’s help I could figure out the problem. Now it works well!
Actually my configuration was incomplete/incorrect. And, the last issue was: I had to activate the individual chat on the plugins|telegram|settings webpage.

Thanks to Dan and all the other contributors!

So as you can see it’s all well:

I didn’t get any feedback only this:

I Copy and past directly my api token and chat id to browser and send via chat_id and text a message to my bot.

As you can see text message will show up in telegram.

I thought it would help to add a small FAQ here (Coming from the updated README.md file I have just checked in on GitHub, as so far all reported issues have been solved this way:

Please try these steps before reporting an issue:

FAQ

I have installed Pimatic-Telegram, but no messages are sent, and no errors are logged. Whats wrong?

Please check the following first, as all similar issues have been solved so far by taking the below steps:
Has the plugin been activated? Check the section "Install the Plugin"
Have you activated the intended recipient? Or has the enabled check box accidentally not been checked
Restart Pimatic, this is often forgotten after the installation and or configuration. If you did everything right, you have rebooted Pimatic twice, once after installation, and once after configuration

I upgraded from a previous version and now messages are no longer sent?
A change in recipient configuration was made since 1.0.2. You will need to create recipients as outlined in the section “Configuration”. The userChatId in the “main” config options is no longer used,i and will be removed in a future version. Just create a new recipient, and copy the userChatId over, restart Pimatic and Presto !

Would be cool to get a function (via rule) in future that i can send a message depended on chat_id or person name.

Thanks for you great work.

@Swen Partially implemented just now, in version 1.0.3.
You can now do: send telegram recipient1 recipient2 recipient… “message to selected recipients” Also see @Harry-van-der-Wolf 's post with request in this thread: I have implemented according to his description.
What is not possible (If I understand you correctly, is have a variable message depending on the targeted recipient.
However, this can also be achieved by creating different rules for each recipient with a specific message on an event, or chaining in a single rule using “and”

Note:
There is an esthetic bug I just found, you may see an error message “userChatId not a valid property”. This can safely be ignored. I’ll try to fix in the next release. If you want to get rid of the error, just remove the “main” userChatId from the config.json file

{
“plugin”: “telegram”,
“active”: true,
“userChatId”: 123456789 <-- THIS ONE
"recipients": [
{
“name”: “JohnnyKnoxville”,
“userChatId”: “987654321”
},
…

Installing Version 1.04

And @Harry-van-der-Wolf thanks for functional testing earlier!

@Dan said in New plugin for Telegram:

There is an esthetic bug I just found, you may see an error message “userChatId not a valid property”.

Looks like this is a left-over in the configuration as used with an earlier version. Looking at the code the property does not seem to be used anymore. Note, if the configuration properties change it is possible to write code to automatically migrate the old configuration.

To get rid of the error message open the configuration editor, switch to emit mode and remove the property.

@mwittig said in New plugin for Telegram:

Looks like this is a left-over in the configuration as used with an earlier version. Looking at the code the property does not seem to be used anymore. Note, if the configuration properties change it is possible to write code to automatically migrate the old configuration.

To get rid of the error message open the configuration editor, switch to emit mode and remove the property.

You are correct, this is a stale config option which simply needs to be removed, I’ll look to implement automatic removal / migration in the next update. If you have a hint, it would be appreciated!

Auto migration is now included

@Dan

Thanks a lot for this excellent plugin.

Hello all,

Hope everyone have enjoyed their Christmas!

There is a new version of Pimatic-Telegram available, which now includes multiple types of media. Next to text messages you can now also send video, audio and photo files.
As part of the upgrade there is a new syntax for actions (Old rules are still valid and will be executed)
send [ text | video | audio | photo ] telegram to [recipient1 recipient2 …] <“message”| “filepath”>

For type, ‘text’ is the default if none specified. I do recommend upgrading your rules to the new format though.
@leader21 Can you arrange for the plugin description to be updated on the pimatic website? I made README changes and I think the Pimatic web version was customized by the Pimatic team…

As it was a bit of rework to make the plugin more extensible, I have tested as much as possible, but dont shoot me if you encounter a bug

Enjoy!

Dan

@Dan said in New plugin for Telegram:

@leader21 Can you arrange for the plugin description to be updated on the pimatic website?

sholud be done automatically. if not i will look into this then.

thx for your work on this very nice and useful plugin!

@Dan
I tested the plugin and it works very well.
(send capture from ipcamera - mp4 and jpg)
Thank you again for your effort

Brilliant update!

Ladies and gents, please review this feature request. I am looking for your thoughts on the functionality of allowing the plugin to receive commands from the telegram client.

Dan

If found this issue by myself in config file and sort out. Work fine now!

@Dan:
As such this request for receiving commands would be very nice but this will only function if you open up your network, or pimatic server, to the internet. As commands go via the central “botfather” server.
I assume @chris thinks he can send commands directly from his phone to his pimatic server inside his network, but that’s not how it works.

Opening up your network, even if it is only the telegram port, could be an issue if telegram is not 100% safe. It should be some configurable on/off switch in the plugin.

@Harry-van-der-Wolf I am looking to implement polling rather than pushing from Telegram back into Pimatic for the reasons you described. That way it will be more secure, and no ports need to be opened inbound…So in my proposed solution Pimatic will ask for messages, process them (including authorization checking) and do further internal processing.

All,

Please see this feature request relating to the new release of the plugin.

Dan