I’m working on a Telegram bot project with the telepot Python library. Right now my bot only responds to commands that begin with forward slash characters in group chats.
I want to modify my bot so it can read and process every single message that gets posted in the group, not just the ones starting with ‘/’. Is this possible with telepot?
I’ve been looking through the documentation but I’m not sure if there’s a specific setting or method I need to use. Maybe there’s a different message handler I should implement? Any help would be great because I need my bot to analyze all the conversations happening in the group.
Has anyone successfully implemented this feature before? What’s the best approach to capture regular text messages alongside command messages?
I faced a similar challenge while developing a Telegram bot for analytics. It’s not an issue with telepot itself; it’s likely your bot’s message processing configuration. First, ensure that privacy mode is disabled in the BotFather settings. This setting limits bots to receiving only messages that start with ‘/’ or mentions. You can adjust this by going to BotFather → your bot → Bot Settings → Group Privacy and turning it off. Once that’s done, your telepot handler should be able to capture all messages in the group chat. Don’t forget to implement error handling as well, since group chats can generate a high volume of messages.
This sounds like a message handling issue, not telepot itself. I ran into the same thing building a group monitoring bot last year. Telepot grabs all messages by default, but you’ve got to handle them right in your callback. Check your message handler - you might be filtering out non-command messages. Look for any if statements that only process messages starting with ‘/’ and ditch those. Also, double-check your bot’s group permissions. Sometimes admins set bots to only see messages that mention them directly. The trick is structuring your on_chat_message method to catch all incoming text, not just commands.
yep, telepot does catch all msgs by default unless u set limits. double check your handler to make sure it’s getting all msgs. don’t just filter for ‘/’ commands, let it handle anything that comes in. good luck with your bot!