CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythontelegramtelethon
Jonny Shanahan
Jonny Shanahan

Reputation: 421

Track number of new subscribers of a Telegram channel?

I am using telethon in python, and I want to try to keep track of the number o new members who join a channel over time.

My first attempt was using the telethon.tl.functions.channels.GetFullChannelRequest function:

async def save_subs(channel_id):
    client = TelegramClient('anon', TELEGRAM_API_ID, TELEGRAM_API_HASH)
    await client.start()
    async with client:
        previous_count = None
        number_new_members = 0
        while True:
            res = await client(
                GetFullChannelRequest(
                    channel=channel_id
                )
            )
            channel_info = res.to_dict()
            count = channel_info['full_chat']['participants_count']
            print(f'current count: {count}')
            if previous_count is not None and count > previous_count:
                number_new_members += count - previous_count
                print(f'new subs: {number_new_members}')
            previous_count = count
            time.sleep(1)

def start(channel_id):
    asyncio.run(save_subs())

However, it seems that every 1 second it too much, and every 4 requests there is a delay of a few seconds. Perhaps this is being rate limited?

Then I tried using the events.ChatAction event because the docs say that a new user joining a channel should trigger, but nothing is getting triggered:

def check_new_user(channel_id):
    telegram_client = TelegramClient('anon', TELEGRAM_API_ID, TELEGRAM_API_HASH)

    @telegram_client.on(events.ChatAction)
    async def my_event_handler(event):
        # this never gets printed
        print('event caught')

    telegram_client.start()
    telegram_client.run_until_disconnected()


def start(channel_id):
    check_events(channel_id)

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1110

Answers (2)

Lonami
Lonami

Reputation: 7141

Many requests to Telegram include a count, accessible via Telethon's .total attribute on the returned lists:

participants = await client.get_participants(channel, 1)
print(participants.total)

This will fetch a single participant (you must have permission to do so), and as a byproduct, Telegram fills-in the total.

Upvotes: 3

Yevhenii Kosmak
Yevhenii Kosmak

Reputation: 3860

I'd advise a more straightforward approach. You can do it using Telegram's t.me application.

DEFAULT_TIMEOUT = 10


def scrap_telegram_members_count(slug: str) -> int:
    def parse_int(s: str) -> int:
        return int(re.sub(r"[^\d]+", "", s))
    
    r = requests.get(
        f"https://t.me/{slug}",
        timeout=DEFAULT_TIMEOUT,
    )
    r.raise_for_status()

    text = r.text
    m = re.search(r'<div class="tgme_page_extra">([^,]+),([^<]+)</div>', text)
    if not m:
        raise RuntimeError("Cannot find members count")
    members_count = parse_int(m.group(1))
    
    return members_count

From my experience, now you can send not less than ~1k requests per day this way.

Upvotes: 2

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