Post to Telegram

Reelspan posts to a Telegram channel or group through a bot you create with @BotFather and add to the chat. Posts appear under the channel's name, as if you had sent them yourself.

What you can post

Captions under a video or photos hold 1,024 characters and text messages 4,096. Longer text is cut to fit, ending in …, and the result carries a warning.

A post in a public channel answers with its link (https://t.me/yourchannel/42). A private channel or a group has no public link, so url is null; post_id is the message id.

Connect your channel

You need a bot token and the chat. Setup takes about two minutes.

1. Open @BotFather in Telegram and send /newbot. Pick a name; it replies with your bot token.
2. Add the bot to your channel or group as an admin that can post messages.
3. In the dashboard, open Accounts → Connect account, choose the profile and Telegram, then paste the token and the chat. A public channel is its @name; a private one is its numeric id, which starts with -100.

To find a private channel's id, forward one of its posts to @userinfobot.

Reelspan checks both with Telegram before saving: the token must be valid, the bot must see the chat, and in a channel the bot must be an admin. The token is stored encrypted.

With the API

Send the same values to POST /v1/accounts/telegram. The chat can be @name, the numeric id, or a https://t.me/name link.

curl -X POST https://api.reelspan.com/v1/accounts/telegram \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $REELSPAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"profile_username": "my-brand", "bot_token": "123456789:AAH...", "chat": "@yourchannel"}'

import { Reelspan } from 'reelspan';

const reelspan = new Reelspan();
await reelspan.accounts.connect('my-brand', 'telegram', {
  bot_token: process.env.TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN,
  chat: '@yourchannel',
});

import os
from reelspan import Reelspan

reelspan = Reelspan()
reelspan.accounts.connect("my-brand", "telegram", bot_token=os.environ["TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN"], chat="@yourchannel")

{ "success": true, "platform": "telegram", "account": "@yourchannel", "reconnected": false }

Connecting again replaces the Telegram account on that profile. See Connect with credentials for the endpoint itself.

Example post

A video to the channel, with its own caption for Telegram:

curl -X POST https://api.reelspan.com/v1/posts/video \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $REELSPAN_API_KEY" \
  -F "user=my-brand" \
  -F "platform[]=telegram" \
  -F "title=Launch day" \
  -F "telegram_title=Launch day. Watch the 60-second tour, then tell us what you think." \
  -F "first_comment=Questions? Reply here." \
  -F "[email protected]"

import { Reelspan } from 'reelspan';
import { readFile } from 'node:fs/promises';

const reelspan = new Reelspan();
const post = await reelspan.posts.video({
  user: 'my-brand',
  platforms: ['telegram'],
  title: 'Launch day',
  firstComment: 'Questions? Reply here.',
  video: { data: await readFile('launch.mp4'), name: 'launch.mp4', type: 'video/mp4' },
  extra: { telegram_title: 'Launch day. Watch the 60-second tour, then tell us what you think.' },
});

from reelspan import Reelspan

reelspan = Reelspan()
post = reelspan.posts.video(
    "my-brand", ["telegram"], "launch.mp4", "Launch day",
    first_comment="Questions? Reply here.",
    extra={"telegram_title": "Launch day. Watch the 60-second tour, then tell us what you think."},
)

{
  "success": true,
  "request_id": "9b1f6c2e8a3d4f50b7e1c9a2d6f3e8b1",
  "results": {
    "telegram": { "success": true, "url": "https://t.me/yourchannel/42", "post_id": "42", "first_comment": "posted" }
  }
}

Fields

Telegram has no options of its own in the dashboard composer.

Limits and behaviour

• Files: up to 50 MB each, the most a bot may send. A larger file fails the Telegram post with file_too_large; other networks in the request are not affected.
• Albums: up to 10 items. With more photos, the first 10 are sent and the result carries a warning.
• Text: captions 1,024 characters, messages 4,096. Longer text is cut with a warning.
• Formatting: text is sent as plain text unless you set telegram_parse_mode. With a parse mode, the text must follow Telegram's rules for it (MarkdownV2 needs characters such as . and ! escaped), or Telegram refuses the message.
• Links: only public channels have post links. Elsewhere url is null.

After posting

The bot can change the messages it sent:

• Delete a message with Unpublish. Telegram lets bots delete messages only for 48 hours after sending.
• Edit its text or caption with Edit a post. Send fields.telegram_parse_mode again if the new text uses formatting.

Common errors

Errors when connecting come back as a 400 with the code in error_code. Errors when posting are in that network's result. See Errors.