Bad Request: invalid user_id specified about botman

[filippotoso]

Log the entire $message payload and start from there.

If getSender() returns 0, then getUser() will fail.

[chimit]

Here is the $message content when it happens:

[2023-09-03 15:27:08] production.INFO: BotMan\BotMan\Messages\Incoming\IncomingMessage::__set_state(array(
   'message' => NULL,
   'sender' => 0,
   'recipient' => NULL,
   'bot_id' => '',
   'images' => 
  array (
  ),
   'videos' => 
  array (
  ),
   'payload' => 
  Illuminate\Support\Collection::__set_state(array(
     'items' => 
    array (
      'from' => 
      array (
        'id' => 0,
      ),
    ),
     'escapeWhenCastingToString' => false,
  )),
   'extras' => 
  array (
  ),
   'audio' => 
  array (
  ),
   'files' => 
  array (
  ),
   'location' => NULL,
   'contact' => NULL,
   'isFromBot' => false,
))  

[filippotoso]

There's nothing there. Someone or something (ie. a crawler) is calling the endpoint without passing any data.

[chimit]

This happens when a bot is added or removed from a group. Looks like Received middleware captures such service messages:

{
    "update_id": 22069942,
    "my_chat_member": {
        "chat": {
            "id": -222222222,
            "title": "Test",
            "type": "group",
            "all_members_are_administrators": true
        },
        "from": {
            "id": 111111111,
            "is_bot": false,
            "first_name": "Example",
            "username": "Example",
            "language_code": "fr"
        },
        "date": 1693746567,
        "old_chat_member": {
            "user": {
                "id": 3333333333,
                "is_bot": true,
                "first_name": "Botname",
                "username": "botnamebot"
            },
            "status": "left"
        },
        "new_chat_member": {
            "user": {
                "id": 3333333333,
                "is_bot": true,
                "first_name": "Botname",
                "username": "botnamebot"
            },
            "status": "member"
        }
    }
}

Is there a way to skip such messages?

[filippotoso]

Just write some code in your Middleware to exclude the processing of this kind of messages.

[chimit]

Yes, I did it this way:

public function received(IncomingMessage $message, $next, BotMan $bot)
{
    // Ignore service messages
    if (! $message->getSender()) {
        return $next($message);
    }

For those who are looking how to capture service messages here are the list of supported Telegram events. Usage is described here.

[chimit]

Another way to ignore service messages is not to use the Received middleware but instead use Heard and Captured.

[chimit]

I realized that one of the reasons for this error is when users add a bot into a channel. Messages from channel admins are anonymous so getUser() method fails. I had to ignore channels in the middleware.