Use this method when you need to tell the user that something is happening on the bot's side. The status is set for 5 seconds or less (when a message arrives from your bot, Telegram clients clear its typing status).

Example: The ImageBot needs some time to process a request and upload the image. Instead of sending a text message along the lines of “Retrieving image, please wait…”, the bot may use sendChatAction with action = upload_photo. The user will see a “sending photo” status for the bot.

Telegram only recommends using this method when a response from the bot will take a noticeable amount of time to arrive.

See sendChatAction official docs for a list of supported actions and other info.

Actions Helper

The SDK also has a helper method for supplying the chat action. This is especially useful with code completion with your IDE.

Example

use Telegram\Bot\Api;
use Telegram\Bot\Actions;

$telegram = new Api('BOT TOKEN');

$telegram->sendChatAction([
  'chat_id' => 'CHAT_ID', 
  'action' => Actions::RECORD_VIDEO
]);

use Telegram\Bot\Actions;

Telegram::sendChatAction([
  'chat_id' => 'CHAT_ID', 
  'action' => Actions::RECORD_VIDEO
]);