How to obtain the chat_id of a private Telegram channel?

Question

I use curl to update my public channels. This kind of syntax:

curl -X POST "https://api.telegram.org/bot144377327:AAGqdElkZ-77zsPRoAXXXXXXXXXX/sendMessage" -d "chat_id=@MyChannel&text=my sample text"

But what's the chat_id of a private channel? It's not the one you have in the private invite.

Because now we can pass a channel username (in the format @channelusername) in the place of chat_id in all methods (and instead of from_chat_id in forwardMessage). But what's the @channelusername of a private channel that I administer?

Answer 1

I found the way to write in private channels.

1. You should convert it to public with some @channelName

2. Send message to this channel through Bot API

   https://api.telegram.org/bot111:222/sendMessage?chat_id=@channelName&text=123

3. As response you will get info with chat_id of your channel.

   {
     "ok" : true,
     "result" : {
       "chat" : {
         **"id" : -1001005582487,**
         "title" : "Test Private Channel",
         "type" : "channel"
       },
       "date" : 1448245538,
       "message_id" : 7,
       "text" : "123ds"
     }
   }
   

4. Now you can convert Channel back to private (by deleting channel's link) and send message directly to this chat_id "-1001005582487"

   https://api.telegram.org/bot111:222/sendMessage?chat_id=-1001005582487&text=123