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Messages and Replies

Sending messages is the core of any bot. This page covers text, media, formatting, replies, and editing. For every variant and parameter, see Statement Reference → Messaging.

Sending text​

send.text("Hello, world!")

Use a backtick template to interpolate variables:

send.text(`Hi ${user.first_name}, you have ${user.visits} visits.`)
tip

Inside ${...}, use simple references only (user.first_name, flow.total). Compute anything complex in a set { } block first, then reference the result. See Expressions.

Formatting with parse_mode​

Telegram supports Markdown and HTML. Pass parse_mode:

send.text("*Bold* and _italic_ and `code`.", parse_mode: "Markdown")

send.text("<b>Bold</b> and <i>italic</i>.", parse_mode: "HTML")

Sending media​

send.photo(file: "https://example.com/cat.jpg", caption: "A cat 🐱")
send.video(file: "https://example.com/clip.mp4", caption: "Watch this")
send.document(file: "https://example.com/report.pdf", caption: "Q3 report")

Media also accepts captions with parse_mode. The full list — audio, voice, animation, location, venue, contact, poll, dice, sticker, media groups, and more — is in Statement Reference → Messaging.

Replying to a message​

send.text accepts an optional reply_to to attach your message as a Telegram reply:

send.text("Got it!", reply_to: message.message_id)

Sending messages with menus​

The reply_markup parameter attaches an interactive keyboard to any message. The recommended approach is a named menu:

menu mainMenu {
  text "🎮 Play" -> startPlay()
  text "📊 Stats" -> showStats()
}

flow start on command "/start" {
  send.text("Welcome!", reply_markup: mainMenu)
}

Named menus re-render automatically when their state changes. See Keyboards & menus for the full reference.

Editing a message​

To update a message you already sent, use edit.text. Inside a callback flow it automatically targets the message the button was attached to — no message id needed:

flow refresh on callback "refresh" {
  edit.text(message: callback.message, text: "✅ Refreshed!", reply_markup: mainMenu)
}

You can also edit just the caption or the keyboard:

edit.caption(message: callback.message, caption: "New caption")
edit.reply_markup(message: callback.message, reply_markup: mainMenu)

Deleting a message​

delete(message: callback.message)

Callbacks answer themselves​

When a flow is triggered by a button tap, Botgami automatically clears Telegram's loading spinner at the end of the flow — you don't need to add an answer step. If you want to show a toast or alert, use send.answer_callback:

flow buy on callback "buy" {
  send.answer_callback(text: "Added to cart!")
  send.text("🛒 1 item in your cart.")
}

Sending to another chat​

By default messages go to the current user/chat. Pass chat_id to target a specific chat — required in scheduled and webhook flows, which have no chat in scope:

flow daily on schedule "0 9 * * *" {
  send.text("Daily digest 📰", chat_id: shared.group_chat_id)
}

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