More Telegram bot features using IFTTT

Now that I created a Telegram bot fed by IFTTT, I can add new features using the available channels. A message with the Milan weather condition every morning, for example, or a cool 500px picture during the day to take a break and enjoy the beauty? Possibilities are limited only by IFTTT skills.

The logic is easy: every recipe has a different trigger (the “this” past), and the action is always the same: use the Maker channel to send a POST HTTP call to the Telegram bot, formatting the message with the specific information I want to display. To create the Telegram bot, please look to my previous post.

Weather

The trigger to activate in the Weather channel is “Today’s weather report”, setting the time of the day the report has to be sent. I set 7.00 am because I prepare last minute, but it’s also possible to select “Tomorrow’s weather report” and receive the message the evening for the ones that want to plan what to dress the next day in advance. There are plenty of other information available in the triggers, like sunrise and sunset time, change of conditions / temperature and much more. The city is selected when the channel in connected with the IFTTT account.

The action is the “Make a web request” is the Maker channel, using the following parameters (XXtokenXX and the chat_id have to be changed with the appropriate values):

• URL: https://api.telegram.org/botXXtokenXX/sendMessage
• Method: POST
• Content type: application/json
• Body: {“chat_id”:”-235327410″, “text”:”Good morning. In Milan {{TodaysCondition}}, max {{HighTempCelsius}} min {{LowTempCelsius}}”}

Cool 500px pictures

The trigger to activate in the 500px channel is “New Editors’ Choice photo”, selecting one of the available categories, or any.

The action is the “Make a web request” is the Maker channel, using the following parameters:

• URL: https://api.telegram.org/botXXtokenXX/sendMessage
• Method: POST
• Content type: application/json
• Body: {“chat_id”:”-235327410″, “text”:”Breath and enjoy the beauty: [<<<{{Title}}>>>]({{SourceUrl}})”, “parse_mode”:”markdown”, “disable_web_page_preview”: “false”}

In order to have a preview of the image embedded in the bot message, I used parse_mode set to markdown and i set disable_web_page_preview to false, even if it’s the default setting. Of course the text value is written using Markdown syntax. For more information on the available parameters, the official doc is a good reference. Again, XXtokenXX and the chat_id have to be changed with the appropriate values.