Overview

It connects to Telegram's API. It generates JSON files containing channel's data, including channel's information and posts. You can search for a specific channel, or a set of channels provided in a text file (one channel per line.)

Files are saved by default in a folder called output/data. These folders are created by the script.

├──🗂 Telegram-api
|   └──main.py
|   └──🗂 config
|   	└──config.ini
|   └──🗂 output
|   	└──collected_chats.csv
|   	└──🗂 data
|   		└──file_messages.json
|   		└──channel.json
|   		└──etc.

Software required

• Python 3.x
• Telegram API credentials
  • Telegram account
  • App api_id
  • App api_hash

Python required libraries

• Telethon
• Pandas
• Openpyxl
• tqdm
• Networkx
• Matplotlib
• Louvain Community Detection

Installing

• Via git clone

git clone https://github.com/estebanpdl/telegram-api.git

This will create a directory called tg-api which contains the Python scripts. Cloning allows you to easily upgrade and switch between available releases.

• From the github download button

Download the ZIP file from github and use your favorite zip utility to unpack the file tg-api.zip on your preferred location.

After cloning or downloding the repository, install the libraries from requirements.txt.

pip install -r requirements.txt

or

pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Once you obtain an API ID and API hash on my.telegram.org, populate the config/config.ini file with the described values.

[Telegram API credentials]
api_id = api_id
api_hash = api_hash
phone = phone

Example usage

main.py

This Python script will connect to Telegram's API and handle your API request.

Options

• --telegram-channel Specifies Telegram Channel to download data from.
• --batch-file File containing Telegram Channels to download data from, one channel per line.
• --limit-download-to-channel-metadata Will collect channels metadata only, not channel's messages. (default = False)
• --min-id Specifies the offset id. This will update Telegram data with new posts.

Examples

Basic request

python main.py --telegram-channel channelname`

Expected output

• Excel file of collected channels
• JSON file containing channel's profile metadata
• JSON file containing posts from the requested channel

Request using a text file containing a set of channels

python main.py --batch-file './path/to/channels_text_file.txt'

Expected output

• Excel file of collected channels
• JSON files containing channels' profile metadata
• JSON files containing posts from each requested channel

These examples will retrieve all posts available through the API from the requested channel. If you want to collect channel's information only, without posts, you can run:

Limit download to channel's metadata only

python main.py --telegram-channel channelname --limit-download-to-channel-metadata

or, using a set of telegram channels via a text file:

python main.py --batch-file './path/to/channels_text_file.txt' --limit-download-to-channel-metadata

Updating channel's data

If you want to collect new messages from one channel, you need to identify the message ID from the last post. Once you identify the id, run:

python main.py --telegram-channel channelname --min-id 12345

Expected output

• Excel file of collected channels - based on new messages
• JSON file containing channel's profile metadata
• JSON file containing new messages posted after the requested ID (min ID)

build-datasets.py

python build-datasets.py

This Python script reads the collected files and creates a new dataset containing messages from the requested channels. By default, the created dataset in CSV format will be located in the output folder.

├──🗂 Telegram-api
|   └──main.py
|   └──🗂 output
|   	└──msgs_dataset.csv

channels-to-network.py

python channels-to-network.py

This Python script builds a network graph. By default, the file will be located in the output folder. The script also shows a preliminary graph using the modules matplotlib, networkx, and python-louvain, which implements community detection. You can use import the graph file in different softwares, including Gephi.

├──🗂 Telegram-api
|   └──main.py
|   └──🗂 output
|   	└──Graph.gexf