Papercraft› TGPy

English

Русский

English

Русский

Appearance

Setting up reminders ​

Sometimes you will want to send notifications to yourself, such as reminders or logs.

You basically don't get a notification when your TGPy code sends a message to any chat, pretty like you don't get a notification when you send a message from another device.

There are a few workarounds.

Method 1. Scheduling messages ​

Telegram has a built-in feature for scheduling messages. You can try it by opening the app and long-tapping (or right clicking) the «Send» button.

Luckily, Telegram notifies you whenever any of your scheduled messages was sent.

That means your TGPy script can postpone a message by a minute rather then send it, and you will get a notification on your devices.

Saved Messages suit well for scheduling reminders. You can also create a private group or channel to have such notifications there.

The realization is as easy as adding the schedule argument to client.send_message() or msg.respond(). For example, this is how to schedule a message to Saved Messages:

python
import datetime as dt

next_minute = dt.datetime.utcnow() + dt.timedelta(minutes=1)
await client.send_message('me', 'Hey there!', schedule=next_minute)

Method 2. Using a bot ​

Direct messages from a bot are the natural way to have notifications.

It's super-easy to control a bot from TGPy, as Telethon methods can be used for bots as well as user accounts.

Firstly, you should create a bot with BotFather. Then log in using the bot token and API key that you are already using:

python
from telethon import TelegramClient
bot = TelegramClient('bot', client.API_ID, client.API_KEY)
await bot.start('your_token')

As a user, you should start the dialog so that the bot will be able to send you messages.

The bot can talk now.

python
await bot.send_message(msg.sender_id, 'Hello world')
return

Just like this, you can use bot with familiar client methods to edit and pin messages, for example.

Bonus method. Marking chats as unread ​

Putting «Unread» mark on a chat without notification may also be helpful.

I used to have TGPy auto-reposting memes from other social media to my channel. My TGPy module sent a message and then marked the chat as unread so I would notice the new messages later.

To mark a chat as uread, you should use the special API method:

python
from telethon import functions

await client(functions.messages.MarkDialogUnreadRequest(peer='Example Chat', unread=True))

As usual, peer here can be anything tha Telethon can convert to a peer: the title, the username, the id, a chat object and so on.

Art Ivanov