Retrieving Messages in Telethon Without Fetching User Entities

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What will you learn?

In this tutorial, you will learn how to efficiently retrieve messages from a chat using Telethon without the need to fetch user entities. By focusing solely on message content retrieval, you can enhance performance and conserve API call quotas.

Introduction to Problem and Solution

Telethon is a powerful Python library for interacting with Telegram’s API. When fetching messages from chats or channels using Telethon, the default behavior often involves retrieving user information (entities) along with the messages. However, if your primary focus is on message content rather than user details, this additional data retrieval can be unnecessary and inefficient.

To address this issue, we will explore how to use specific parameters and methods provided by Telethon to skip fetching user entities while retrieving chat messages. By adopting this approach, you can optimize bandwidth usage, reduce server load, and improve the overall efficiency of your script execution.

Code

from telethon.sync import TelegramClient

# Initialize your Telegram client here (replace 'YOUR_API_ID', 'YOUR_API_HASH', and 'YOUR_PHONE_NUMBER' with your actual details)
client = TelegramClient('session_name', YOUR_API_ID, YOUR_API_HASH)

async def get_messages_without_users(chat_id):
    async with client:
        # Fetching only the message text without getting user entities.
        # Use limit parameter as needed.
        messages = await client.get_messages(chat_id, limit=100)

        for message in messages:
            print(message.id, message.text)

# Replace 'chat_id_here' with your target chat ID or username
client.loop.run_until_complete(get_messages_without_users('chat_id_here'))

# Copyright PHD

Explanation

Here’s a breakdown of the code snippet:

  • Initialize TelegramClient with your credentials.
  • Define an asynchronous function get_messages_without_users to fetch recent messages from a specified chat without retrieving user entities.
  • Utilize client.get_messages() method to specify the chat ID and set a limit on the number of recent messages to fetch.
  • Iterate over each fetched message object and print its ID along with its textual content (message.text).

By following this approach, you can minimize bandwidth usage and enhance performance by avoiding unnecessary requests for user entity data when fetching chat messages.

    1. How do I install Telethon? To install Telethon, use the following command:

    2. pip install telethon
    3. # Copyright PHD

    4. Can I use this code asynchronously? Yes! The provided example already incorporates asynchronous programming concepts in Python. Ensure you run it in an environment that supports async operations.

    5. What are API ID and HASH? API ID and HASH are credentials obtained from my.telegram.org after registering your application. They uniquely identify your app within Telegram’s ecosystem.

    6. Can I fetch more than 1000 recent messages? While technically possible through pagination (add_offset parameter), consider potential rate limits imposed by Telegram’s API when making numerous requests.

    7. Is it possible to get sender information without additional requests? Directly? No�since we intentionally avoid fetching entity info here; however, sender IDs are available within message objects for later reference if required (“lazy-loading” concept).

    8. Does this method work for private channels/groups? Yes! As long as your account has appropriate access rights/permissions within those chats/channels/groups.

Conclusion

Efficiently retrieving chat/messages while bypassing unnecessary loading of user entities demonstrates one way to leverage Telethon for smarter data handling and reduced overheads in applications or integrations built on top of the platform. This tutorial encourages further exploration of Telethon’s capabilities beyond the basics covered here, potentially unlocking greater efficiencies and optimal workflows.

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