my telegram bot keeps sending messages endlessly

Question

I Started programming a telegram bot and I've got a problem. when I send /start command it sends me a welcome message (as i programmed it) but it doesn't sends it once! it keeps sending it endlessly like loop! this is the source:

<?php
    define('API_KEY','<token>');
    
    function makereq($method,$datas=[])
    {
        $url = "https://api.telegram.org/bot".API_KEY."/".$method;
        $ch = curl_init();
        curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL,$url);
        curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,true);
        curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,http_build_query($datas));
        $res = curl_exec($ch);
        if(curl_error($ch)){
            var_dump(curl_error($ch));
        }else{
            return json_decode($res);
        }
    }
    
    $website = "https://api.telegram.org/bot".API_KEY;
    
    $update = json_decode(file_get_contents('php://input'));
    
    $chat_id = $update->message->chat->id;
    $message_id = $update->message->message_id;
    $from_id = $update->message->from->id;
    $name = $update->message->from->first_name;
    $username = $update->message->from->username;
    $textmessage = isset($update->message->text)?$update->message->text:'';
    $reply = $update->message->reply_to_message->forward_from->id;
    $stickerid = $update->message->reply_to_message->sticker->file_id;
    $messageEntity = $update->messageentity->type;
    
    function SendMessage($ChatId, $TextMsg)
    {
     makereq('sendMessage',[
    'chat_id'=>$ChatId,
    'text'=>$TextMsg,
    'parse_mode'=>"MarkDown"]
     );
    }
    if($textmessage == '/start')
    {
      SendMessage($chat_id,'<welcome message>');
    }
    
?>

Yoily L · Accepted Answer · 2018-10-16T13:04:27.090

You're probably using webhook.
If you don't respond with a http status 200 the telegram bot API thinks something is wrong with your server and requests again every few seconds as mentioned in the API documentation:

In case of an unsuccessful request, we will give up after a reasonable amount of attempts.

So just add header("HTTP/1.1 200 OK"); to your script and voilà!
(If your php version is greater than 5.4 you can use http_response_code(200); )

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 14 '16 at 17:33

2

If you are polling with getUpdates, you need to increment your offset.

offset = 1 + latest_update_id

IF you are using WebHooks ... https://core.telegram.org/bots/api#update update_id

The update‘s unique identifier. Update identifiers start from a certain positive number and increase sequentially. This ID becomes especially handy if you’re using Webhooks, since it allows you to ignore repeated updates or to restore the correct update sequence, should they get out of order.

answered Nov 14 '16 at 17:33

Charles Okwuagwu

10,538
16
87
157

are you using webhooks or are you polling? – Charles Okwuagwu Nov 14 '16 at 18:13
I'm using webhooks – Hamidreza Ahmadzadeh Nov 14 '16 at 18:49
1

ok so for webhook how should I do the increment ? just `$result ['update_id'] = ++$update; ` ? @CharlesOkwuagwu – Amir Mar 04 '20 at 11:49
you can ignore repeated update ids Telegram will simply send you latest set of updates. you don't need to do anything, if you get a repeated update_id, simply ignore – Charles Okwuagwu Mar 04 '20 at 12:56

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 17 '17 at 14:48

As Yoily L said, you gotta return 200 before telegram thinks the request has failed.

You may use fastcgi_finish_request() to flush response data to the client. http://php.net/manual/en/function.fastcgi-finish-request.php

http_response_code(200);
fastcgi_finish_request();

// continue execution, send messages and whatever

Also, notice what tuxrampage commented in the docs:

The script will still occupy a FPM process after fastcgi_finish_request(). So using it excessively for long running tasks may occupy all your FPM threads up to pm.max_children. This will lead to gateway errors on the webserver.

Another important thing is session handling. Sessions are locked as long as they're active (see the documentation for session_write_close()). This means subsequent requests will block until the session is closed.

You should therefore call session_write_close() as soon as possible (even before fastcgi_finish_request()) to allow subsequent requests and a good user experience.

This also applies for all other locking techniques as flock or database locks for example. As long as a lock is active subsequent requests might bock.

You'll probably want to check

if (is_callable('fastcgi_finish_request')) {
    ...
}

More info in related question: continue processing php after sending http response

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 23 '20 at 15:47

1

I came upon this issue recently and stopped it by sending a blank message to the chat. you get an error from telegram, but no more messages are sent.

answered Sep 23 '20 at 15:47

Toby Allen

10,997
11
73
124

This works like a charm. Also, I use this solution https://stackoverflow.com/a/46256172/1642423 – JuanFernandoz Apr 11 '21 at 06:04

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 14 '20 at 09:27

When my Telegram-bot keeped sending messages, I created a table of recording posts in the database. When I am sending a post in my Telegram-bot, written in PHP alghorythm checks if a new post already exists in the database: * if it does, we stop the process of sending the post; * if it doesn't, we continue sending it in Telegram. The described method allows to stop cycle of sending the post again and again.

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered May 11 '20 at 07:02

Telegram robot due to the structure of hooks and sending and receiving messages in specified time formats It is very sensitive to time. I had the same problem and found that using the date_default_timezone_set function This will solve the problem after deleting this function. If you have changed time templates in your code, delete them.

my telegram bot keeps sending messages endlessly

6 Answers6