New Telegram bot return almost empty JSON to API

Question

I want to create a Telegram bot, so I followed the instructions and got:

Done! Congratulations on your new bot. You will find it at t.me/RonGuruBot. You can now add a description, about section and profile picture for your bot, see /help for a list of commands. By the way, when you've finished creating your cool bot, ping our Bot Support if you want a better username for it. Just make sure the bot is fully operational before you do this.

Use this token to access the HTTP API: 318659684:AAFdR9YE4DEwg1NQitSIuifPotoA-3f6cUw

However, when I enter the following URL into Chrome:

https://api.telegram.org/bot318659684:AAFdR9YE4DEwg1NQitSIuifPotoA-3f6cUw/getUpdates

The returned JSON is:

{"ok":true,"result":[]}

And the documentation led me to believe that there should be more in the JSON reply.

• Should there be more?
• What should I change to get a correct JSON reply?

Answer 1

Albeit from 2017, this still pops up as one of the first results in Google and it is still relevant so ... in my case :

1. Send a message to the just created bot (like hello) just after the /start command
2. execute getUpdates again

Answer 2

I think the issue is about initiating first updates to the bot via Desktop app. When I sent a message to bot from my mobile app, I started to receive updates.

Answer 3

if you do not change the privacy settings,

the bot only receives messages beginning with / e.g. /start,

this can be painful research, especially in multi-user chats

a good strategy is to mention the bot in the group

(e.g. /start mybot_bot )