Telegram-cli : Script not sending message - linux

Question

I am making a simple bash script with Telegram-cli, in which I send 2 parameters (destination and message), and it should send a Telegram message to the destination (Name_FamilyName).
The script looks as follows:
#!/bin/bash
destination=$1;
message=$2;
(echo "msg $destination $message"; echo "safe_quit") | bin/telegram-cli -k tg-server.pub -W
With that, in theory, messages should be sent. I change the permissions of the script, and I call it in the next way:
./script_send_message.sh Max_Musterman "Hola qute tal estas"
And that is the output I get:
Telegram-cli version 1.2.0, Copyright (C) 2013-2015 Vitaly Valtman
Telegram-cli comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `show_license'.
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; type `show_license' for details.
Telegram-cli uses libtgl version 1.2.0
I: config dir=[/home/machine/.telegram-cli]
> msg Max_Musterman Hola qute tal estas
> safe_quit
User Max_Musterman updated username
User Max_Musterman online (was online [2015/04/09 06:56:04])
User Test Phone offline (was online [2015/04/09 06:51:42])
> > All done. Exit
halt
No message has been sent at all. Insted, if I send exactly the same message from the console, it works fine. Here is what I do:
bin/telegram-cli -k server.pub -W
Telegram-cli version 1.2.0, Copyright (C) 2013-2015 Vitaly Valtman
Telegram-cli comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `show_license'.
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; type `show_license' for details.
Telegram-cli uses libtgl version 1.2.0
I: config dir=[/home/machine/.telegram-cli]
User Max_Musterman updated username
User Max_Musterman online (was online [2015/04/09 06:59:46])
User Max_Musterman offline (was online [2015/04/09 06:51:42])
> msg Max_Musterman Hola qute tal estas
[06:57] Max_Musterman <<< Hola qute tal estas
User Max_Musterman marked read 1 outbox and 0 inbox messages
User Max_Musterman offline (was online [2015/04/09 06:57:29])
>
I am running out of ideas. I start to think that, somehow, the contact list is not loaded when the command msg is sent in the script, so it sends nothing(in the console, if you send a message to a made up user, it won't do anything like in the script).
Has anyone experienced something similar? Any solution? Thank you for your help.

Answer 1

You have other option:
instead of piping commands to telegram-cli you can use "-e" option and the user_id, this way:
telegram-cli -RD -e "msg user#nnnnnnn Hola caracola"
where nnnnn is the user_id. You can find it via the "user_info ....." command.
This way you don't need to sleep, just make the telegram-cli do all the work, and without using the -W command telegram doesn't need to get all your contacts.

Answer 2

Looks like when you run telegram_cli from the script, it needs a bit of time to be able to send any message (until it shows the list of Users at least). If you send a message before the user list is loaded, you won't be able to send anything. So a quick fix (or we may call it a naughty hack) is to tell the script to wait 3 seconds for sending the message:
#!/bin/bash
destination=$1;
message=$2;
(sleep 3;echo "msg $destination $message"; echo "safe_quit") | bin/telegram-cli -k tg-server.pub -W
Maybe you have to change the sleep3 to sleep 5 or something like that, but it should be able to send the messages after that.