Roadmap

Action workflow

  • action is triggered on schedule at 23:30 UTC every day
  • installs python-telegram-bot and PyGithub
  • makes _posts folder for posts
  • run backup_telegram_channel.py with usage of BOT_TOKEN
  • run upload_to_github.py with usage of AUTH_TOKEN

backup_telegram_channel.py

  • gets channel updates for last 24 hours and saves as dictionary of the newly created or the last version of updated posts, uses python-telegram-bot library

    python-telegram-bot is a wrapper of the Telegram Bot API. Incoming channel updates are stored on the server no longer than 24 hours. That’s why action in the orkflo is triggered once every day. If you need more functionality, then look into full Telegram API, register new Telegram App and use api_id and an api_hash for authentification. This script should be rewritten for usage of another API.

  • save all posts from dictionary in the YYYY-MM-DD-postId.md format in _posts folder

upload_to_github.py

  • gets all files in your channel backup repository as a set
  • commits and pushes all posts from _posts folder with right commit message (updated or created post)

(Optional, not used in the action workflow) backup_telegram_channel_history.py

If you already have a channel and there are already posts older than last 24 hours, then this optional script is for you. You need to have Python3 and Telegram Desktop installed. Telegraph and BeautifulSoup are used to prettify html string from Telegraph articles.

  • Checkout this repository and install necessary dependancies:
   git clone https://github.com/CatUnderTheLeaf/telegram_channel_backup.git
   
   pip install PyGithub
   pip install 'telegraph[aio]'
   pip install beautifulsoup4
   
   # create folder for old posts in json format
   cd telegram_channel_backup
   mkdir json_dump
  • Go to Telegram Desktop, open your channel, click on three dots sign in the upper right corner and select export chat history, select JSON as format and json_dump as path
  • Convert posts and upload them to your repository:
   # convert json format to posts in the `YYYY-MM-DD-postId.md` format in `_posts` folder
   # json_dump is a folder with dumped history and images
   python backup_telegram_channel_history.py dump_dir=json_dump
   
   # replace placeholders for actual values
   python upload_to_github.py auth_token=$AUTH_TOKEN repo=$CHANNEL_REPO branch=$BRANCH