Destroyed Accessing the Full API (markdown)

Lonami 2018-06-25 09:25:10 +02:00
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The `TelegramClient` doesn't offer a method for every single request the Telegram API supports. However, it's very simple to `.invoke()` any request. Whenever you need something, don't forget to [check the documentation](https://lonamiwebs.github.io/Telethon) and look for the [method you need](https://lonamiwebs.github.io/Telethon/methods/index.html). There you can go through a sorted list of everything you can do.
You should also refer to the documentation to see what the objects (constructors) Telegram returns look like. Every constructor inherits from a common type, and that's the reason for this distinction.
Say `client.send_message()` didn't exist, we could use the [search](https://lonamiwebs.github.io/Telethon/?q=message) to look for "message". There we would find [`SendMessageRequest`](https://lonamiwebs.github.io/Telethon/methods/messages/send_message.html), which we can work with.
Every request is a Python class, and has the parameters needed for you to invoke it. You can also call `help(request)` for information on what input parameters it takes. Remember to "Copy import to the clipboard", or your script won't be aware of this class! Now we have:
```python
from telethon.tl.functions.messages import SendMessageRequest
```
If you're going to use a lot of these, you may do:
```python
import telethon.tl.functions as tl
# We now have access to 'tl.messages.SendMessageRequest'
```
We see that this request must take at least two parameters, a `peer` of type [`InputPeer`](https://lonamiwebs.github.io/Telethon/types/input_peer.html), and a `message` which is just a Python `str`ing.
How can we retrieve this `InputPeer`? We have two options. We manually [construct one](https://lonamiwebs.github.io/Telethon/constructors/input_peer_user.html), for instance:
```python
from telethon.tl.types import InputPeerUser
peer = InputPeerUser(user_id, user_hash)
```
Or we call `.get_input_entity()`:
```python
peer = client.get_input_entity('someone')
```
When you're going to invoke an API method, most require you to pass an `InputUser`, `InputChat`, or so on, this is why using `.get_input_entity()` is more straightforward (and sometimes immediate, if you know the ID of the user for instance). If you also need to have information about the whole user, use `.get_entity()` instead:
```python
entity = client.get_entity('someone')
```
In the later case, when you use the entity, the library will cast it to its "input" version for you. If you already have the complete user and want to cache its input version so the library doesn't have to do this every time its used, simply call `.get_input_peer`:
```python
from telethon import utils
peer = utils.get_input_user(entity)
```
After this small parenthesis about `.get_entity` versus `.get_input_entity`, we have everything we need. To `.invoke()` our request we do:
```python
result = client(SendMessageRequest(peer, 'Hello there!'))
# __call__ is an alias for client.invoke(request). Both will work
```
Message sent! Of course, this is only an example. There are nearly 250 methods available as of layer 73, and you can use every single of them as you wish. Remember to use the right types! To sum up:
```python
result = client(SendMessageRequest(
client.get_input_entity('username'), 'Hello there!'
))
```
## Notes
Note that some requests have a "hash" parameter. This is **not** your `api_hash`! It likely isn't your self-user `.access_hash` either. It's a special hash used by Telegram to only send a difference of new data that you don't already have with that request, so you can leave it to 0, and it should work (which means no hash is known yet).
For those requests having a "limit" parameter, you can often set it to zero to signify "return as many items as possible". This won't work for all of them though, for instance, in "messages.search" it will actually return 0 items.