How to backup Telegram chat? - lua

Question

I found somethings like this code to send to Telegram-CLI but I have no idea what it means or how to do it so if someone could explain it to me step by step I'd be so happy.
https://github.com/psamim/telegram-cli-backup
I couldn't install sqlite3 for some reason with the given code there.
I'm using windows, do I need to boot into Ubuntu to do it?
Anyways, explain it to me like I'm 3 years old in case I won't know something.
Thanks so much.

Answer 1

If you are using windows check the instructions here. I've only tried in Linux and the link in your question (using Lua) works.
The following scripts too does the job well
Python script to backup everything
https://github.com/tvdstaaij/telegram-json-backup
Here is a ruby version of the same https://github.com/tvdstaaij/telegram-history-dump

Answer 2

The mentioned script is updated and now it saves the conversations into a CSV file and does not need sqlite3 library any more. It only needs lua.

Answer 3

It seems I could help you a little.
I am using Ubuntu and I wrote this Bash-script:
#!/bin/bash
TOKEN='YourBot:Token'
URL='https://api.telegram.org/bot'$TOKEN
UPD_URL=$URL'/getUpdates?offset='
function get_offset {
res=$(curl $UPD_URL$OFFSET)
OFFSET=$(echo $res | grep "update_id" | cut -f 4 -d ':' | cut -f 1 -d ',' | head -1)
OFFSET=$((OFFSET+1))
}
while :
do
get_offset
if echo $res | grep "message"
then echo $res >> BackupChat.txt
fi
done
It is very simple bash-script.
Obviously you must create your own bot and add bot to the chat you want to backup.
Bad things about this script is that it creates pretty difficult for reading text logfile with mass garbage like "username" "date" "::" , etc. But it could be improved for making a normal output looking like a cool database.
I hope you have enough Linux skills to make it by yourself.

Answer 4

I think the situation improved since this question was asked, so here an answer from a 2020's point of view that does not require any programming skills or command line tools.
To backup (aka. "export") your Telegram chats download the desktop client available here:
https://desktop.telegram.org/
On Linux, for example, unpack the downloaded file into any subdirectory like ~/tmp/, and start the client from there, like
$ cd ~/tmp/Telegram
$ ./Telegram
You will need to register first with your phone number like on any other Telegram devices via a confirmation code sent to your already logged-in telegram account.
The user interface looks similar to the web interface.
Go into a chat you are interested in, then in the upper right menu choose "Export chat history". Click all checkboxes you are interested in, like media files, GIFs, stickers, etc. and click export.
By default it generates a complete HTML files and subdirectory structure under ~/Downloads/Telegram Desktop/ which you can open for instance like this:
firefox ~/Downloads/Telegram\ Desktop/ChatExport_01_02_2020/messages.html
If you need a more complete backup of all chats you can go to the central menu (3 small bars) on the top left, then "Settings" -> "Advanced" -> under "Data and Storage" choose "Export Telegram data". There you can also click checkboxes for what you are interested in. Near the bottom is aselection between HTML for humas, or machine-readable JSON.
On the very first export request it first requires you to confirm on another Telegram instance to allow the export request, to avoid misuse. Once you confirmed, e.g. from your mobile phone, you can go to export again and proceed as described above without any further confirmations.