stm

stm

Simple Telegram message sender written in Go.

Introduction

stm (send telegram message) is a binary tool to easily send Telegram messages using the HTTP-based Telegram bot API. Using this tool you'll easily be able to send messages to Telegram users, allowing you to automate services or provide server information to your users.

Installation

There are no packages for now, so you can either:

• Download, compile and install the source code using the standard go tools: go get github.com/albertquiroga/stm. This will install the binary in your $GOPATH/bin directory or in $HOME/go/bin if you don't have a $GOPATH.
• Download the proper binary from the releases page and copy it to a location in your PATH.

Usage

stm allows you to send messages to any user or chatroom in Telegram from a bot user. In order to do that you'll need:

• To create your own bot user, from which messages will be sent.
• To identify the chat ID of the user or chatroom you want to send the messages to.
• Properly configure stm with the results of the previous steps to make it work!

Configuring a Telegram bot

Head to the Telegram bot documentation page and follow the "creating a new bot" steps. Creating a bot is pretty simple and you can customize it with a name and a picture for easy recognition. Once you are done you'll get a Telegram bot API key (something along the lines of 110201543:AAHdqTcvCH1vGWJxfSeofSAs0K5PALDsaw). That's the key that will allow you to send messages as your bot and that you'll need to configure stm.

Obtaining your user chat ID

Everything in Telegram is a chatroom, including one-to-one conversations. That means your conversation with your mom is identified by a chat room ID and not by your mom's username, which isn't very intuitive for one-to-one chats.

You can get that identifier in several ways, but the easiest one is to use Fredy Kardian's bot (@get_id_bot). Simply open a conversation with that bot and type the /my_id command, it'll answer you with your chat ID. If you want the chat ID of a contact, send the bot the contact. And if you want the chat ID of a group chat room, add the bot to the room and type the /my_id command.

Using the tool and flags

Now that you have all required parameters, let's configure the tool. A message in stm is defined by:

• Its source (the bot API key)
• Its destination (the chat ID of the user/group you want to send messages to)
• The actual message you want to send

The first two can either be set as CLI flags when summoning stm or be stored in a CSV file for added privacy. CLI flags have priority over the CSV file, so you can override stored settings for a quick message to a different user.

CLI flags are:

• --help: displays the usage help message.
• -b or --bot: allows you to specify a bot API key.
• -c or --chat: allows to you specify a chat ID.
• -i or --identity: path to a CSV file containing the bot API key and chat ID.

The identity file is a simple CSV file in the form of botAPIkey,chatID. If you want to always use the same file and not specify it, you can store it in your $HOME directory as ".stm" and stm will automatically use those credentials (if they are not overriden by flags).

Example file:

110201543:AAHdqTcvCH1vGWJxfSeofSAs0K5PALDsaw,1281283

Finally, the message will be passed as an argument when summoning stm (remember to surround it in double quotes if it includes spaces).

Credits

Credits to @alecthomas for his Kingpin library.