Send telegram message periodically using bot

Question

Give the code below:

def start(update, context):
    context.bot.send_message(chat_id=update.effective_chat.id, text="I'm a bot, please talk to me!")

Is it possible to call this function periodically and make my bot send the message to the user automatically instead of the user typing "/start"

Answer 1

you need to create a job object which is delivered by python-telegram-bot so to simply run the function start let's say every minute you could use this approach:

j= updater.job_queue

def start(update, context):
    context.bot.send_message(chat_id=update.effective_chat.id, text="I'm a bot, please talk to me!")

j.run_repeating(start,interval = 60  ,first= 0 )
updater.start_polling()

and if you wanted to run it every day at specific time you could use:

import datetime 
j= updater.job_queue

def start(update, context):
    context.bot.send_message(chat_id=update.effective_chat.id, text="I'm a bot, please talk to me!")

t= datetime.time(6, 15, 00, 000000)

j.run_daily(start, t, days=(0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), context=None, name=None)
updater.start_polling()

note that there's no handlers to be added to the dispatcher.

and you probably should know that the datetime.time object uses the UTC time if not modified.

for more information check Extensions – JobQueue here

Answer 2

Maybe this answer helps with your question. Secondly what I can recommend you is to have a look at Flask and Node-RED. From this tutorial, I think you would understand how to create your structure easily.