Telegram bot: How to mention user by its id (not its username)

Question

I am creating a telegram bot and using sendMessage method to send the messages. it is easy to mention user using @username, But how to mention user when they don't have username?

If using the telegram app/web, we can mentioned the user by @integer_id (name), and telegram app/web will convert it into clickable text. integer_id will be generated automatically when we select the user, after typing @.

another background: I am trying to use forceReply and I want to target user, if they have username, I can easily target them, by mentioning them on the text on sendMessage method.

the bot I am creating is a "quiz" like bot. where each player need to take turn, and the bot is sending them the question, each msg from bot will target different player.

NOTE: I am not disabling the Privacy Mode, I don't want telegram bombing my server with msg I don't need. it was overloading my cheap nasty server. so, disabling it not an option.

I am open for other solution, where the bot can listen to selected player.

thanks.

UPDATE 21/10: I've spoke to BotSupport for telegram, they said, for now Bots can't mention user without username.

so in my case, I still keep using forceReply, and also, gave a short msg to user which doesn't have username to set it up, so they can get the benefit from forceReply function.

Answer 1

According to official documentation it is possible to mention user by its numerical id with markup:

[inline mention of a user](tg://user?id=123456789)

Answer 2

According to this link : it is possible to mention user by its numerical id with markup:

Markdown style

To use this mode, pass Markdown in the parse_mode field when using sendMessage. Use the following syntax in your message:

[inline mention of a user](tg://user?id=123456789)

and you can also use HTML style :

HTML style

To use this mode, pass HTML in the parse_mode field when using sendMessage. The following tags are currently supported:

<a href="tg://user?id=123456789">inline mention of a user</a>

Answer 3

Try this:

@bot.message_handler(func=lambda message: True)     
def echo_message(message):
    cid = message.chat.id 
    message_text = message.text 
    user_id = message.from_user.id 
    user_name = message.from_user.first_name 
    mention = "["+user_name+"](tg://user?id="+str(user_id)+")"
    bot_msg = f"Hi, {mention}"
    if message_text.lower() == "hi":
        bot.send_message(cid, bot_msg, parse_mode="Markdown")

Answer 4

For python-telegram-bot you can do the following:

user_id = update.message.from_user['id']
user_name = update.message.from_user['username']

mention = "["+user_name+"](tg://user?id="+str(user_id)+")"
response = f"Hi, {mention}"

context.bot.sendMessage(chat_id=update.message.chat_id,text=response,parse_mode="Markdown")