Sending FormLister Submissions to Telegram

FormLister can do more than send mail. A small prepare snippet is enough to forward form submissions to a Telegram bot, which is useful for quick notifications on landing pages, internal dashboards, and compact client projects.

The right overall idea is simple: collect the form fields, build a readable message, and send it to the Telegram Bot API. The main cleanup is making the request safer and easier to maintain.

Prepare snippet example

<?php
$token = 'YOUR_BOT_TOKEN';
$chatId = 'YOUR_CHAT_ID';

$ip = $modx->getOption('REMOTE_ADDR', $_SERVER, '');
$name = $FormLister->getField('name');
$email = $FormLister->getField('email');
$message = $FormLister->getField('message');

$rows = [
    'Name' => $name,
    'Email' => $email,
    'Message' => $message,
    'IP' => $ip,
];

$text = '';
foreach ($rows as $label => $value) {
    $text .= '<b>' . $label . '</b>: ' . $value . "
";
}

file_get_contents(
    'https://api.telegram.org/bot' . $token . '/sendMessage?' . http_build_query([
        'chat_id' => $chatId,
        'parse_mode' => 'html',
        'text' => $text,
    ])
);

return true;

What to improve from the original pattern

• use http_build_query() instead of building the URL manually
• store the bot token and chat ID in configuration, not inside the snippet body
• sanitize or limit very long message fields before sending them to Telegram

This approach is a good fit when the site owner wants instant chat notifications and does not need a full CRM integration yet. It is especially useful for lead forms where email delivery may be slower or less visible than a Telegram alert.