Message Formatting

Telegram supports rich text formatting through message entities — positional markers that indicate bold, italic, code, links, and more.

Using parse_markdown

The easiest way is parse_markdown, which converts a Markdown-like syntax into a (String, Vec<MessageEntity>) tuple:

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
use layer_client::parsers::parse_markdown;
use layer_client::InputMessage;

let (plain, entities) = parse_markdown(
    "**Bold text**, _italic text_, `inline code`\n\
     and a [clickable link](https://example.com)"
);

let msg = InputMessage::text(plain).entities(entities);
client.send_message_to_peer_ex(peer, &msg).await?;
}

Supported syntax

Building entities manually

For full control, construct MessageEntity values directly:

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
use layer_tl_types as tl;

let text = "Hello world";
let entities = vec![
    // Bold "Hello"
    tl::enums::MessageEntity::Bold(tl::types::MessageEntityBold {
        offset: 0,
        length: 5,
    }),
    // Code "world"
    tl::enums::MessageEntity::Code(tl::types::MessageEntityCode {
        offset: 6,
        length: 5,
    }),
];

let msg = InputMessage::text(text).entities(entities);
}

All entity types (Layer 223)

Pre block with language

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
tl::enums::MessageEntity::Pre(tl::types::MessageEntityPre {
    offset:   0,
    length:   code_text.len() as i32,
    language: "rust".into(),
})
}

Mention by user ID (no @username needed)

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
tl::enums::MessageEntity::MentionName(tl::types::MessageEntityMentionName {
    offset:  0,
    length:  5,   // length of the label text
    user_id: 123456789,
})
}

FormattedDate — Layer 223

A new entity that automatically formats a unix timestamp into the user’s local timezone and locale:

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
tl::enums::MessageEntity::FormattedDate(tl::types::MessageEntityFormattedDate {
    flags:    0,
    relative:    false, // "yesterday", "2 days ago"
    short_time:  false, // "14:30"
    long_time:   false, // "2:30 PM"
    short_date:  true,  // "Jan 5"
    long_date:   false, // "January 5, 2026"
    day_of_week: false, // "Monday"
    offset:      0,
    length:      text.len() as i32,
    date:        1736000000, // unix timestamp
})
}