Send a text message

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This page describes how to create messages that appear inline as if typed by a user. Use text messages to present simple information to users. For information about how you can construct more complex messages that generate cards in the chat, see Send a card message.

Prerequisites

To run the examples in this guide, you need the following prerequisites:

Python

Anatomy of a text message

Any message in Google Chat is represented as a JSON object. The following example is a basic message that specifies a simple plaintext body:

{
  "text": "Your pizza delivery is here!"
}

If posted into Google Chat, this example renders like the following:

Send an asynchronous text message

Here's how to create a text message:

Python

  1. In your working directory, create a file named chat_create_text_message.py.

  2. Include the following code in chat_create_text_message.py:

    from httplib2 import Http
from oauth2client.service_account import ServiceAccountCredentials
from apiclient.discovery import build

# Specify required scopes.
SCOPES = ['https://www.googleapis.com/auth/chat.bot']

# Specify service account details.
CREDENTIALS = ServiceAccountCredentials.from_json_keyfile_name(
    'service_account.json', SCOPES)

# Build the URI and authenticate with the service account.
chat = build('chat', 'v1', http=CREDENTIALS.authorize(Http()))

# Create a Chat message.
result = chat.spaces().messages().create(

    # The space to create the message in.
    #
    # Replace SPACE with a space name.
    # Obtain the space name from the spaces resource of Chat API,
    # or from a space's URL.
    parent='spaces/SPACE',

    # The message to create.
    body={'text': 'Hello, world!'}

).execute()

print(result)

  3. In the code, replace SPACE with a space name, which you can obtain from the spaces.list() method in Chat API, or from a space's URL.

  4. In your working directory, build and run the sample:

    python3 chat_create_text_message.py

Format texts in messages

Google Chat lets you add basic formatting to the message text, including bold, italic, and strikethrough. To format text, wrap it with the following symbols:

Format Symbol Example Result
Bold * *hello* hello
Italic _ (underscore) _hello_ hello
Strikethrough ~ ~hello~ hello
Monospace ` (backquote) `hello` hello
Monospace block ``` (three backquotes) ```
Hello
World
```		 Hello
World

For example, consider the following JSON:

{
  "text": "Your pizza delivery *has arrived*!\nThank you for using _Pizza Bot!_"
}

This places a message like this into the Chat space:

This text markup syntax is the same syntax that applies to messages typed by users, which is why it is distinct from the HTML-based formatting applied to text inside cards.

Include links in message text

If you include a plain link URL in your message text, such as http://example.com/, Google Chat uses this as the link text and automatically hyperlinks that text to the specified URL.

To provide alternate link text for your link, use the following syntax:

Syntax Rendering
<https://example.com/|LINK_TEXT> LINK_TEXT

The pipe and link text are optional, so that <https://example.com/> and https://example.com/ are equivalent.

Messages that @mention specific users

A Chat app can @mention a user in a message by providing their USER_ID in the following syntax. To determine the USER_ID for a user, examine the sender field of the incoming message from the user.

<users/USER_ID>

This string is substituted with an @mention of the specified user. For example, consider the following JSON:

{
    "text": "Hey <users/123456789012345678901>! Thank you for using _Pizza bot!_"
}

This produces a result like the following:

Messages that @mention all users

You can use the user ID all to @mention all the human users in a space. For example:

{
    "text": "Important message for <users/all>: Code freeze starts at midnight tonight!"
}