Telegram Bot: Downloading All Images from a Single Update with Shared media_group_id

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1

Hey everyone! I’m having trouble with my Telegram bot. It’s supposed to download all photos from a single update that share the same media_group_id, but it’s only grabbing one image. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

async def fetch_images(update: Update, context: ContextTypes.DEFAULT_TYPE):
    photo_list = update.message.photo
    saved_files = []

    if photo_list:
        best_quality = photo_list[-1]
        image_id = best_quality.file_id
        print(f'Processing image: {image_id}')

        try:
            file_data = await context.bot.get_file(image_id)
            download_link = file_data.file_path
            print(f'Download link: {download_link}')

            image_name = f'img_{update.message.message_id}_{best_quality.file_unique_id}.jpg'
            
            image_content = requests.get(download_link).content
            with open(image_name, 'wb') as img_file:
                img_file.write(image_content)
            saved_files.append(image_name)
            print(f'Saved image: {image_id}')
        except Exception as e:
            print(f'Error saving image {image_id}: {e}')

    print(f'Saved images: {saved_files}')
    return saved_files

The code works, but it’s only saving one photo when I send multiple. How can I modify this to grab all the images from the same media_group_id? Any help would be awesome!

2

I’ve dealt with a similar issue before, and I think I know what’s going on. The problem is that when you send multiple photos as an album in Telegram, each photo comes as a separate update, but they all share the same media_group_id.

To fix this, you’ll need to modify your code to handle multiple updates and group them by media_group_id. Here’s a rough outline of what you could do:

  1. Create a dictionary to store updates by media_group_id.
  2. In your message handler, check if the update has a media_group_id.
  3. If it does, add it to the dictionary, keyed by the media_group_id.
  4. Use a timer or counter to wait for all updates in the group to arrive.
  5. Once you have all updates, process them together to download all images.

This approach should allow you to capture all images from an album. It’s a bit more complex than handling single images, but it’s necessary for dealing with Telegram’s way of sending multiple photos. Hope this helps point you in the right direction!

3

yo, i had the same issue. try using the get_media_group method from the bot api. it’ll grab all the pics with the same media_group_id. then just loop through em and download. something like:

msgs = await context.bot.get_media_group(chat_id, msg_id)
for msg in msgs:
    if msg.photo:
        # download logic here

should do the trick. good luck!

4

I encountered a similar challenge while working on a Telegram bot project. The key is to leverage the media_group_id attribute. Here’s a suggestion:

Modify your function to accept the media_group_id as a parameter. Then, use it to fetch all related messages:

async def fetch_images(update, context, media_group_id):
messages = await context.bot.get_media_group(update.message.chat_id, update.message.message_id)
saved_files = 

for msg in messages:
    if msg.photo:
        # Your existing download logic here
        # ...

return saved_files

This approach should capture all images in the group. Remember to handle potential API rate limits and implement error checking. Also, consider using asyncio.gather() for concurrent downloads to improve efficiency.