How do I send Tables with Telegram Bot API?

Question

I need to send stock market data and the formatting sucks right now. Need to send something liike this

| Symbol | Price | Change | 
|--------|-------|--------|
| ABC | 20.85 | 1.626 | 
| DEF | 78.95 | 0.099 | 
| GHI | 23.45 | 0.192 | 
| JKL | 98.85 | 0.292 |

This is what I have tried.

| Symbol | Price | Change |  
|--------|-------|--------|  
| ABC | 20.85 | 1.626 |   
| DEF | 78.95 | 0.099 |   
| GHI | 23.45 | 0.192 |    
| JKL | 98.85 | 0.292 |

Ruslan Novikov · Answer 1 · 2021-05-13T18:16:30.307

15

Set the Telegram API parse_mode parameter to HTML and wrap the message in <pre></pre> , but remember that telegram API does not support nested tags.

<pre>
| Tables   |      Are      |  Cool |
|----------|:-------------:|------:|
| col 1 is |  left-aligned | $1600 |
| col 2 is |    centered   |   $12 |
| col 3 is | right-aligned |    $1 |
</pre>

Result in Telegram messanger:

Updated. How convert the tables in the picture

There will be a problem on the small screens of smartphones. So this method is not good. The only option is to convert the tables in the picture and so send :

Or you can convert HTML to image using a headerless browser on your server.
Or you can convert HTML to image using here external API services
Or you can convert HTML to image using more difficult way by php GD

edited May 13 '21 at 18:16

answered May 21 '19 at 12:50

Ruslan Novikov

1,074
14
19

1

How to convert table into picture ? – Sunny Apr 12 '21 at 23:16
1

how can I convert pandas dataframe to this html format? I tried df.to_html() but that didn work. – Kundan Nov 03 '21 at 15:58
Kundan, I don't know pandas dataframe for Python. But I know that too complicated convert any HTML to rich txt format for Telegram message. You should use Telegram service for instance view HTML articles https://telegram.org/blog/instant-view in your project – Ruslan Novikov Nov 04 '21 at 08:55

score 11 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 15 '20 at 10:03

11

Try this

```| Symbol | Price | Change |
|--------|-------|--------|
| ABC    | 20.85 |  1.626 |
| DEF    | 78.95 |  0.099 |
| GHI    | 23.45 |  0.192 |
| JKL    | 98.85 |  0.292 |```

answered Jan 15 '20 at 10:03

iliyesku

311
2
9

2

You need to set parse_mode=ParseMode.MARKDOWN_V2 parameter , for this to work. – al.zatv Apr 22 '21 at 16:24

score 10 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 16 '21 at 07:35

Import "prettytable" library in python to format your table:

import prettytable as pt
from telegram import ParseMode
from telegram.ext import CallbackContext, Updater


def send_table(update: Updater, context: CallbackContext):
    table = pt.PrettyTable(['Symbol', 'Price', 'Change'])
    table.align['Symbol'] = 'l'
    table.align['Price'] = 'r'
    table.align['Change'] = 'r'

    data = [
        ('ABC', 20.85, 1.626),
        ('DEF', 78.95, 0.099),
        ('GHI', 23.45, 0.192),
        ('JKL', 98.85, 0.292),
    ]
    for symbol, price, change in data:
        table.add_row([symbol, f'{price:.2f}', f'{change:.3f}'])

    update.message.reply_text(f'<pre>{table}</pre>', parse_mode=ParseMode.HTML)
    # or use markdown
    update.message.reply_text(f'```{table}```', parse_mode=ParseMode.MARKDOWN_V2)

You will receive message like:

+--------+-------+--------+
| Symbol | Price | Change |
+--------+-------+--------+
| ABC    | 20.85 |  1.626 |
| DEF    | 78.95 |  0.099 |
| GHI    | 23.45 |  0.192 |
| JKL    | 98.85 |  0.292 |
+--------+-------+--------+

good solution! FYI, it plays bad with emojis in column names — pcko1, Jul 20 '21 at 17:10

score 7 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 18 '18 at 09:06

7

You can use HTML or Markdown markup to send something like <pre> in HTML. Just like this example.

answered Mar 18 '18 at 09:06

Sean

6,740
1
14
36

1

or he can convert the table to an image. – علیرضا Mar 18 '18 at 11:59

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Sep 03 '19 at 03:07

1

I found this library - TableJs - that solves this problem. Works great on desktop clients however android clients didn't seem to render it properly.

answered Sep 03 '19 at 03:07

Aditya

595
1
6
15

I had the same problem on Android, but fixed it by overriding the `config.border` property and using a more basic character set. – Joe Coder Jan 18 '22 at 17:18

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Jun 20 '20 at 06:58

1

Formatting the text as "Monospace" works too

answered Jun 20 '20 at 06:58

dnth

856
2
12
22

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered May 31 '22 at 18:26

I wrote a code to build a Telegram html table from an array of strings.

Just build an array with the lines with columns data separated by ";" and this code will output the Telegram ready table.

Enjoy, figure out the parameters :)

You must use "parse_mode" = "html" when sending the message to Telegram Api.

public string BuildTelegramTable(
            List<string> table_lines,
            string tableColumnSeparator = "|", char inputArraySeparator = ';',
            int maxColumnWidth = 0, bool fixedColumnWidth = false, bool autoColumnWidth = false,
            int minimumColumnWidth = 4, int columnPadRight = 0, int columnPadLeft = 0,
            bool beginEndBorders = true)
        {
            var prereadyTable = new List<string>() { "<pre>" };
            var columnsWidth = new List<int>();
            var firstLine = table_lines[0];
            var lineVector = firstLine.Split(inputArraySeparator);

            if (fixedColumnWidth && maxColumnWidth == 0) throw new ArgumentException("For fixedColumnWidth usage must set maxColumnWidth > 0");
            else if (fixedColumnWidth && maxColumnWidth > 0)
            {
                for(var x=0;x<lineVector.Length;x++)
                    columnsWidth.Add(maxColumnWidth + columnPadRight + columnPadLeft);
            }
            else
            {
                for(var x=0;x<lineVector.Length;x++)
                {
                    var columnData = lineVector[x].Trim();
                    var columnFullLength = columnData.Length;

                    if (autoColumnWidth)
                        table_lines.ForEach(line => columnFullLength = line.Split(inputArraySeparator)[x].Length > columnFullLength ? line.Split(inputArraySeparator)[x].Length : columnFullLength);
                    
                    columnFullLength = columnFullLength < minimumColumnWidth ? minimumColumnWidth : columnFullLength;

                    var columnWidth = columnFullLength + columnPadRight + columnPadLeft;

                    if (maxColumnWidth > 0 && columnWidth > maxColumnWidth)
                        columnWidth = maxColumnWidth;

                    columnsWidth.Add(columnWidth);
                }
            }

            foreach(var line in table_lines)
            {
                lineVector = line.Split(inputArraySeparator);

                var fullLine = new string[lineVector.Length+(beginEndBorders ? 2 : 0)];
                if (beginEndBorders) fullLine[0] = "";

                for(var x=0;x<lineVector.Length;x++)
                {
                    var clearedData = lineVector[x].Trim();
                    var dataLength = clearedData.Length;
                    var columnWidth = columnsWidth[x];
                    var columnSizeWithoutTrimSize = columnWidth - columnPadRight - columnPadLeft;
                    var dataCharsToRead = columnSizeWithoutTrimSize > dataLength ? dataLength : columnSizeWithoutTrimSize;
                    var columnData = clearedData.Substring(0,dataCharsToRead);
                    columnData = columnData.PadRight(columnData.Length + columnPadRight);
                    columnData = columnData.PadLeft(columnData.Length + columnPadLeft);

                    var column = columnData.PadRight(columnWidth);

                    fullLine[x+(beginEndBorders ? 1 : 0)] = column;
                }

                if (beginEndBorders) fullLine[fullLine.Length - 1] = "";

                prereadyTable.Add(string.Join(tableColumnSeparator,fullLine));
            }

            prereadyTable.Add("</pre>");

            return string.Join("\r\n",prereadyTable);
        }

How do I send Tables with Telegram Bot API?

7 Answers7

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