telegram-bot

This script logs in as a user and can perform actions on behalf of the currently logged in user.

At the moment it can get all the groups, where the user is subscribed and get a list of users of some of those groups. This script cannot get the users of any group due to some kind of restrictions, which the group admins place for in the groups.

Get the source code from github.

Initialisation

User application

In order to start using this bot, it is necessary to obtain API ID and API HASH for your user account.

It can be done via https://my.telegram.org/. Enter your phone number, verify with the sent code and go to the API Development Tools page. There create an app and copy API ID and API HASH.

Bot

If there is a plan to use a bot, then the bot must be created via the BotFather in any Telegram application. See Telegram instructions. Such bot will have a name and a token, which also must be stored.

NOTE Bots cannot perform all the actions, so the creation of the user application, as desribed above, may be necessary for certain tasks.

WARNING Never give anyone the credentials of neither your user application nor your bot. Also add to the ignore list of your VCS, the files, which have the credentials stored.

Setup

Environment variables

Create a file .env and save there the API ID, the API HASH, the bot name, the bot token, a database name (can be any), a session name (can be any) and, possibly, other required data in the following format:

APP_API_HASH=<your api hash>
APP_API_ID=<your api id>
DB_NAME=<your database name>
SESSION_NAME=<your session name>
TG_BOT_NAME=<bot name>
TG_BOT_TOKEN=<bot token>
...

NOTE Do not use spaces or other special characters in your custom names.

WARNING Never give anyone the credentials of neither your user application nor your bot. Also add to the ignore list of your VCS, the files, which have the credentials stored.

Virtual environment

Create a python virtual environment (search online about how to do it for your OS). On Linux Debian distros it can be done with:

sudo apt install python3-venv -y
python3 -m venv /path/to/virtual-environment

Start your virtual environment:

source /path/to/virtual-environment/bin/activate

Install the requirements:

pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Initialisation

Run init.py file:

python3 init.py

This will create an sqlite database file with two tables group and user. The name of the file will be read from the .env file. See init.py for more details.

Parsing

After the initialisation it is all ready for parsing channels and users.

NOTE Always start your virtual environment before executing the sripts:

source /path/to/virtual-environment/bin/activate

Run main.py to start the parsing:

python3 main.py

The script will parse the channels and save their info and the data of the participants of those channels into the database.

In order to parse only one channel, use -g optional argument with the cahnnel username (the name which starts with @ symbol and can be found in the channel info page, specifying @ is not necessary):

python3 main.py -g <channel username>