How to remove all requests from Telegram Bot database (getUpdates) - php

Question

hello my bot continue sending message to me.
my code is:
while(true)
{
header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8');
$token= "MY-TOKEN";
$url= "https://api.telegram.org/bot".$token."/getUpdates";
$update = file_get_contents($url);
$arrayUpdate= json_decode($update, true);
foreach ($arrayUpdate['result'] as $key) {
$chat_id = $key['message']['from']['id'];
$command = $key['message']['text'];
}
if($command == "/start"){
$text= "starting...";
$url= "https://api.telegram.org/bot".$token."/sendMessage?chat_id=".$chat_id."&text=".$text;
file_get_contents($url);
}
}
my bot send me message infinity i want my bot to send me message when i use it then stop and wait for next request.

Answer 1

Your problem is that you put your code that checks for updates in a infinite while loop. So you get infinite messages. To fix that:
Manage "offsets" of updates. Every update has a unique id number called update_id. Every time an update gets received, its update_id equals update_id of the last messages + 1 (Every time an update arrives, its update_id gets increased by one). You can ask bot api to get only updates that has a update_id bigger than or equal what you specify, by passing offset when executing getUpdates:
This is one example, using GET:
api.telegram.org/bot<TOKEN>/getUpdates?offset=<UPDATE_ID>
Save the update_id of the last message you received. Add it by 1. Next time when you ask for updates via getUpdates, pass this new update_id as offset as shown above (or via POST). And api will bring you the next message received. Also, when you use offset to get new messages, old messages get deleted. They can't be obtained using getUpdates.
Process only the last message you receive, not all of them. Currently, you are processing all messages received in one request. But this way you would process old message more than once. So just process the last one and let the api delete the last message for you in each request.
Messages saved in getUpdates queue will eventually get empty as every old message gets deleted in each request. Don't forget to take care about such situation.
More info about getUpdates: API Documentation