I am building a Kotlin telegram bot using the latest version of this Java SDK.

I am trying to send an invoice using Telegram internal currency stars

Their official docs say that in order to do this you need to specify currency="XTR" and providerToken="" to create a stars invoice

I do exactly like this and then get an error from the Telegram API:

.telegram.telegrambots.meta.exceptions.TelegramApiValidationException: ProviderToken parameter can't be empty in method: SendInvoice(chatId=149396481, messageThreadId=null, title=Пожертвуйте на приложениe, description=Пожертвование, payload=test, providerToken=, startParameter=, currency=XTR, prices=[LabeledPrice(label=Пожертвование, amount=1)], photoUrl=null, photoSize=null, photoWidth=null, photoHeight=null, needName=null, needPhoneNumber=null, needEmail=null, needShippingAddress=null, isFlexible=null, disableNotification=null, replyToMessageId=null, sendPhoneNumberToProvider=null, sendEmailToProvider=null, replyMarkup=null, providerData=null, allowSendingWithoutReply=null, maxTipAmount=null, suggestedTipAmounts=[], protectContent=null, replyParameters=null)

Questions:

1. Has anyone seen this error before?
2. How do you fix it? I don't want to setup an external payment provider and get the token. The docs say that with stars it should be possible.

Here's the code I use to build the SendInvoice object

fun invoice(
        chatId: String,
        text: String,
        starsAmount: Int,
        isFlexible: Boolean = true
    ) = SendInvoice.builder()
        .chatId(chatId)
        .title(text)
        .description("Пожертвование")
        .prices(listOf(LabeledPrice.builder().label("Пожертвование").amount(starsAmount).build()))
        .currency("XTR")
        .providerToken("")
        .payload("test")
        .startParameter("")
        .build()
}

I am building a Kotlin telegram bot using the latest version of this Java SDK.

I am trying to send an invoice using Telegram internal currency stars

Their official docs say that in order to do this you need to specify currency="XTR" and providerToken="" to create a stars invoice

I do exactly like this and then get an error from the Telegram API:

.telegram.telegrambots.meta.exceptions.TelegramApiValidationException: ProviderToken parameter can't be empty in method: SendInvoice(chatId=149396481, messageThreadId=null, title=Пожертвуйте на приложениe, description=Пожертвование, payload=test, providerToken=, startParameter=, currency=XTR, prices=[LabeledPrice(label=Пожертвование, amount=1)], photoUrl=null, photoSize=null, photoWidth=null, photoHeight=null, needName=null, needPhoneNumber=null, needEmail=null, needShippingAddress=null, isFlexible=null, disableNotification=null, replyToMessageId=null, sendPhoneNumberToProvider=null, sendEmailToProvider=null, replyMarkup=null, providerData=null, allowSendingWithoutReply=null, maxTipAmount=null, suggestedTipAmounts=[], protectContent=null, replyParameters=null)

Questions:

1. Has anyone seen this error before?
2. How do you fix it? I don't want to setup an external payment provider and get the token. The docs say that with stars it should be possible.

Here's the code I use to build the SendInvoice object

fun invoice(
        chatId: String,
        text: String,
        starsAmount: Int,
        isFlexible: Boolean = true
    ) = SendInvoice.builder()
        .chatId(chatId)
        .title(text)
        .description("Пожертвование")
        .prices(listOf(LabeledPrice.builder().label("Пожертвование").amount(starsAmount).build()))
        .currency("XTR")
        .providerToken("")
        .payload("test")
        .startParameter("")
        .build()
}

• java
• kotlin
• telegram
• telegram-bot
• telegram-api

2 Answers 2

From the official ChangeLog:

The parameter provider_token of the methods sendInvoice and createInvoiceLink must be omitted for payments in Telegram Stars.

But you're adding .providerToken("") which isn't allowed, just remove those fields!

EDIT: Found the Github issue about this, should be working if you omit that field, the last comments shows this working example:

SendInvoice sendInvoice = SendInvoice
    .builder()
    .chatId(callbackQuery.getMessage().getChatId())
    .title("title")
    .description("Description ")
    .payload(callbackQuery.getId() + "-" + System.currentTimeMillis())
    .currency("XTR")
    .price(LabeledPrice
            .builder()
            .label("Price")
            .amount(100)
            .build()
    )
    .build();

I've managed to get this code to somehow work. An invoice does get sent from my bot wit h this. The issue might to be caused by a bug in the Telegram SDK specifically in the builder class for SendInvoice.

Solution key ideas:
- Build the object yourself instead of relying on the builder class
- Fields payload and providerToken must not be null or empty (API rejects these values), so you can set them to some simple non-empty string and see if it works. It does.

fun invoice(
        chatId: String,
        text: String,
        starsAmount: Int,
        isFlexible: Boolean = true
    ) = SendInvoice().apply {
        this.chatId = chatId
        this.title = text
        this.description = "Пожертвование"
        prices = listOf(LabeledPrice.builder().label("Пожертвование").amount(starsAmount).build())
        currency = "XTR"
        payload = "pl"
        providerToken = "x"
    }