pytelegrambotapi check bot is member of group

Question

what is the best way to find out if the bot is the member of a Telegram group using pytelegrambotapi?

bot.send_message(GroupID,"test") 

it returns an error if bot is not in the group but i don't want check it this way

Answer 1

You can handle the error with try | except,every error in python returns a specific exception, and the name of the exception, you can handle this and use the name of the exception and know specifically the error.

• in my case, it returned all this error:

2023-04-29 02:43:06,787 (__init__.py:1083 MainThread) ERROR - TeleBot: "Threaded polling exception: A request to the Telegram API was unsuccessful. Error code: 400. Description: Bad Request: chat not found"
2023-04-29 02:43:06,788 (__init__.py:1085 MainThread) ERROR - TeleBot: "Exception traceback:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/vinicius/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/telebot/__init__.py", line 1074, in __threaded_polling
    self.worker_pool.raise_exceptions()
  File "/home/vinicius/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/telebot/util.py", line 147, in raise_exceptions
    raise self.exception_info
  File "/home/vinicius/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/telebot/util.py", line 90, in run
    task(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/home/vinicius/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/telebot/__init__.py", line 6720, in _run_middlewares_and_handler
    result = handler['function'](message)
  File "/home/vinicius/Scripts/bot.py", line 11, in Start
    bot.send_message(groupid, 'Beep!!!')
  File "/home/vinicius/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/telebot/__init__.py", line 1549, in send_message
    apihelper.send_message(
  File "/home/vinicius/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/telebot/apihelper.py", line 264, in send_message
    return _make_request(token, method_url, params=payload, method='post')
  File "/home/vinicius/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/telebot/apihelper.py", line 162, in _make_request
    json_result = _check_result(method_name, result)
  File "/home/vinicius/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/telebot/apihelper.py", line 189, in _check_result
    raise ApiTelegramException(method_name, result, result_json)
telebot.apihelper.ApiTelegramException: A request to the Telegram API was unsuccessful. Error code: 400. Description: Bad Request: chat not found

in the last line we can see the exception telebot.apihelper.ApiTelegramException. it's not a specific exception, but it's possible to handle it.

• I've made sample code on how to handle this so you always get a specific exception. in your case:

@bot.message_handler(commands=['start'])
def Start(message):
    GROUPID = '-123456789'
    try:
        bot.send_message(GROUPID, 'Beep!!!')
        
    except telebot.apihelper.ApiTelegramException as err:
        string = str(err)[91:]
        if 'chat not found' in string:
            print('Group not found')

bot.infinity_polling()

• it's not a good practice to pollute except, but in your case, I think it's the only way. I hope it helped you.

Answer 2

1: Get the bot ID.

2: Get the chat ID of the group.

3: Check if the bot is a chat member using "getChatMember" or "getDefaultAdmninistratorRights".