Telegram Integration in your APEX application

Telegram is one of the widely used messenger platform. It has lots of features like bots, channels and groups. In-short, it is more then a messenger platform.

Purpose of this blog is to see a basic example of how we can use Telegram platform to integrate with Oracle APEX application. Following is my use case.

When a new Order get’s created, I want to notified specific admin users with order details. The benefit is that, those who are part of that group will receive a new message as a notification in Telegram mobile application.

Yes, you can! And it’s FREE !!!

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• Step 2 – Following steps to perform in Telegram Mobile App
  • /start
  • /newbot
  • Bot Name = <BOT_NAME>
  • Username = <BOT_USERNAME>
  • You will receive HTTP API token here, please save it. This will be useful in accessing the REST API

• Step 3 – Following steps to perform in Telegram Mobile App to add bot user into channel
  • Open Channel
  • Click on Manage Channel
  • Click Administrators
  • Click Add Administrator
  • Search “<BOT_USERNAME>”
  • Click on the bot you found and Add

• Step 6 – Following steps to find your channel chat_id
  • chat_id always starts with – (minus sign)
  • to find your chat_id, use following method
    • Send one dummy/test message into your channel via Telegram App
    • Open following URL in your browser window.
      • https://api.telegram.org/bot<bot_token>/getUpdates
    • Result
      • {“ok”:true,”result”:[{“update_id”:369100877,”channel_post”:{“message_id”:2,”chat”:{“id”:<here_is_chat_id>,”title”:”<title>”,”type”:”channel”},”date”:1602245959,”text”:”Welcome”}}]}

Test Telegram Integration from PL/SQL

SET DEFINE OFF;
SET SERVEROUTPUT ON;

DECLARE
  l_result clob;
BEGIN
  l_result := APEX_WEB_SERVICE.MAKE_REST_REQUEST(
    p_url => 'https://api.telegram.org/bot<bot_token>/getMe'
   ,p_http_method => 'GET'
   ,p_wallet_path => '<wallet_path>'
   ,p_wallet_pwd => '<wallet_pwd>'
  );
  DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE(l_result);
END;

Result:
{"ok":true,"result":{"id":<bot-id>,"is_bot":true,"first_name":"<bot-name>","username":"<bot-username>","can_join_groups":true,"can_read_all_group_messages":false,"supports_inline_queries":false}}

Send Message into Telegram Channel using PL/SQL

SET DEFINE OFF;
SET SERVEROUTPUT ON;

DECLARE
  l_result clob;
BEGIN
  apex_web_service.g_request_headers.delete();
  apex_web_service.g_request_headers(1).name := 'Content-Type';
  apex_web_service.g_request_headers(1).value := 'application/json';
  
  l_result := APEX_WEB_SERVICE.MAKE_REST_REQUEST(
    p_url => 'https://api.telegram.org/bot<bot_token>/sendMessage'
   ,p_http_method => 'POST'
   ,p_wallet_path => '<wallet_path>'
   ,p_wallet_pwd => '<wallet_pwd>'
   ,p_body => '{"chat_id":-<chat_id>,"text":"Welcome to https://apex18.blogspot.com. Introducing https://apexpert.in."}'
  );
  
  DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE(l_result);
END;