“getFile” method in Telegram Bot API

6
votes

In Telegram Bot API there's a method "getFile" https://core.telegram.org/bots/api#getfile. I have a bot for testing and have Telegram install on Android. How do I test this method, should I send a file to my bot? If so, then how exactly?

1
androidtelegramtelegram-bot

1 Answers

23
votes

If someone has sent your bot a file (photo, video, document, audio, etc), getFile returns information which allows your bot to download the file. To test this method, do the following:

  1. Use the Android Telegram app to send your bot a photo.

  2. Open a browser, enter in the address bar https://api.telegram.org/bot<token>/getUpdates

    You should see several file_ids in the response. These are thumbnails of the photo.

  3. Pick a file_id of your choice. Enter in the browser's address bar https://api.telegram.org/bot<token>/getFile?file_id=<file_id>

    Look for file_path in the response. It should look something like photo\/file_22.jpg. The backslash is only to escape the forward slash, so the file_path is actually photo/file_22.jpg

  4. Enter in the address bar https://api.telegram.org/file/bot<token>/<file_path>

    You should see the corresponding thumbnail of the photo.

To download the file programmatically, you may follow the exact same steps as above, or you may use a library such as telepot (Python), which provides a method to download files conveniently, without going through all the above steps.