How do I upload an image to Telegram's sever

Question

I'm writing a telegram bot (in Python) that sends images. I'm sending every images several times, and the documentation recommends to sent send a file_id of a file that is already stored in Telegram's sever.

But I can't find any documentation about storing a file In the sever and getting a file_id. I can try to send an image (to myself? to the bot?) and get it's file_id, but it seems sooo hacky.

Answer 1

OK, I got it.. you do have to send an image once, but it easy to get the file_id:

msg = bot.send_photo(chat_id=chat_id, photo=open("filename", "rb"))
file_id = msg.photo[0].file_id
 ...
bot.send_photo(photo=file_id)

Answer 2

Here is a vanilla python solution:

from io import BytesIO
import requests
from PIL import Image

CHAT_ID = 'id'
SEND_PHOTO = f'https://api.telegram.org/bot{TOKEN}/sendPhoto'

image = Image.open('photo.jpg')

with BytesIO() as output:
    image.save(output, format='JPEG')
    output.seek(0)
    requests.post(SEND_PHOTO, data={'chat_id': CHAT_ID}, files={'photo': output.read()})

Note that chat_id should be passed via data parameter (not json) and bytes via file parameter of requests.post. It also has to include photo key.