cerrrbot is a Telegram Bot designed to help collect and organize various types of content.

• About
• Getting Started
  • Prerequisites
  • Running with venv
  • Running with Docker
• Configuration
• Usage
• Plugins

As Telegram becomes very convenient and solid platform not only for messaging, but also for content consumption in channels, users often find themselves saving various types of content, such as news articles, memes, and media, to the Saved messages chat. However, as the volume of saved data increases, it becomes challenging to distinguish valuable content from temporary or less important data in mentioned chat.

So, I decided to develop this bot as a personal tool to enhance the functionality of the Saved messages chat. It can be considered as Smart Saved messages.

• Python 3.11+
• Mongo DB 4.4
• Redis 7.2
• Celery 5.2
• aiogram 3.0

• temporary messages;
• automatic message removal after a set time;
• automatic media downloads;
• authorized messages receiving from specific user(s) only;
• notifications;
• extensibility through plugins;

Before using cerrrbot, ensure you have the following prerequisites installed on your system:

• Python 3.11+;
• Docker (optional) - if you prefer to run applications in containers;

Also, make sure you have running locally or in docker containers these services:

• MongoDB;
• Redis (optional).

git clone --recurse-submodules [email protected]:kehlerr/cerrrbot.git
cd cerrrbot/

1. Create virtual environment and activate it: python -m venv .venv && source activate
2. Install the required dependencies and initialize the appdata directory:: make init
3. Edit the .env file to configure bot (see Configuration section below) and ensure the BOT_TOKEN variable is set with your bot's token and ALLOWED_USERS filled with at least one Telegram User ID.
4. Run bot: make run

1. For the first time create docker network: docker network create cerrrbot-network
2. Copy sample.env file to .env: make copy_env
3. Edit the .env file to configure bot (see Configuration section below) and ensure the BOT_TOKEN variable is set with your bot's token and ALLOWED_USERS filled with at least one Telegram User ID.
4. Run Docker containers: make dc_up

You can find an example of the configuration in the sample.env and bot/settings.py files. Most variables are self-explanatory; however, here are explanations for some of them:

• ALLOWED_USERS - a list of user IDs permitted to send messages to the bot. Must contain at least one user ID;
• DELETE_TIMEOUT_1, DELETE_TIMEOUT_2, DELETE_TIMEOUT_3 - 3 options for delayed message deletion, see Usage section below about it.
• TIMEOUT_BEFORE_PERFORMING_DEFAULT_ACTION - a timeout before executing automatic default actions, see Usage section below about it;
• DEFAULT_CACHE_KEY_PREFIX_NOTIFICATION - prefix for keys in Redis used to select rows for sending notifications.

When you send or forward some message with text only, Bot will reply on this message with message with menu so-called reply-message. You can choose to just Keep the message in the chat or press the Delete button and select when the message will be deleted: immediately or after a specific time (defined in variables DELETE_TIMEOUT_1, DELETE_TIMEOUT_2, DELETE_TIMEOUT_3). If no action is taken, the message will be deleted after the time specified in DELETE_TIMEOUT_1. In both cases of deletion (automatic or custom), the bot's reply-message will also be deleted.

When you send or forward message with media content (video, image, GIF, audio, file, voicemessage and videomessage), a Download button will be added to the reply-message. If the message contains multiple media items (so-called group of medias), a Download all button will be provided for downloading all items in the group, but if you press Download, the first media will be download only. All downloads will be stored in directory, specified in DATA_DIR_PATH variable. By default, messages with media content will trigger the Download or Download all action (for media groups). If you don't press Keep or Delete, the media will be downloaded after a delay specified in the TIMEOUT_BEFORE_PERFORMING_DEFAULT_ACTION variable.

The logic for messages with stickers is similar to messages with media, but Download and Download all buttons are always provided. When you press Download the sent sticker is downloaded, in second case all stickers from sticker pack will be download in directory with name of this sticker pack.

Bot periodically checks the Redis DB cache for entries with a prefix specified in the DEFAULT_CACHE_KEY_PREFIX_NOTIFICATION variable. When it finds an entry, Bot sends a message containing the notification's content. To set up notifications, it's recommended to use plugins. However, you can also manually insert notification entries into the Redis DB. The structure of notification dictionary should match the model of Notification from bot/services/notifications/notification.py:

• text str: text which will be sent in the message;
• chat_id Optional[str]: ID of the chat, where message will be sent; if not specified, message will be sent to the first user, which specified in variable ALLOWED_USERS;
• reply_to_message_id Optional[str]: if specified, notification message will be displayed as reply to message with such ID;
• send_at Optional[int]: UTC timestamp, when message should be sent;
• send_count Optional[int]: if specified value is more than 1, notification will be repeated several times;
• repeat_in Optional[int]: timeout between sending repeating notifications, used if specified send_count.

cerrrbot's functionality can be easily extended with plugins, allowing you to add new actions and features. You can see examples of plugins which I developed for myself in this repository.

To create your plugin, follow these steps:

Create directory named with your name <PLUGIN_NAME> in bot/plugins with next structure:

-<PLUGIN_NAME>/
	- __init__.py
	- tasks.py
	- settings.py
	- <other modules>
	- ...

This file should contain:

from  models  import  CustomMessageAction
from .tasks  import <Task1>, <...>

actions  = (
	CustomMessageAction(code="<...>", caption="<...>", order=<...>, method_args={
		"task_name": "plugins.<PLUGIN_NAME>.tasks.<Task1>",
		<...>
	}),
	...
)

tasks  = (<Task1>, <...>)

The main thing here is actions and tasks variables. In actions you have to specify configuration of actions:

• code str: this is code associated with Telegram inline-button;
• caption str: this is caption, which will be displayed on Telegram button;
• order int: order for sorting buttons;
• method_args dict: this is keyword parameters, which will be passed into your task as arguments:
  • task_name str: this parameter must be specified in order to Celery discovers tasks;
  • regex str: regular expression, if message text passed for this value, then button of this action appears;
  • is_instant Optional[bool]: if set to True, then action will be executed in bot worker, otherwise it will be sent to Celery worker;
  • parse_text_links Optional[bool]: if set to True, then all links entities from message will be passed to task
  • <...> Optional[Any]: your custom parameters, which will be passed into task.

This file must contain Celery class-based tasks with logic of your plugin:

from  celery  import  Task

<your imports here>

class Task1(Task):
	
	def  run(self, _, msgdoc) -> <...>:
		<your_logic_here>

Ideally, run method of task should return AppResult instance, which could be imported from common.py: from common import AppResult

As mentioned above, you can easily set up notifications to be sent using your plugin's logic. Here's an example:

import  asyncio
from  celery  import  Task

from  services.notifications  import  Notification, push_message_notification


class Task2(Task):
	def  run(self, _, msgdoc) -> <...>:
		<your_logic_here>
		asyncio.run(push_message_notification(
			Notification(
				text="Task2 finished!",
				<other_notification_parameters>
			)
		))
		...

See more about notifications parameters above.