Telegram::GroupScraper - Scraper for public Telegram channels and groups

Scraper Overview

The scraper collects all posts and messages from public Telegram channels and groups.

The operation logic differs from other scrapers: it automatically iterates through messages in a channel or group. Because of this, it cannot be used together with other scrapers in a single task.

The order of lines in the result is not guaranteed by post number (depends on threads). Chat/channel metadata is loaded once per channel and duplicated in each post line.

Saving results is possible in any format and structure you need, thanks to the powerful built-in Template Toolkit which allows applying additional logic to results and outputting data in various formats, including JSON, SQL, and CSV.

Go to DEMOBuy A-Parser Pro ($299)

Scraper Use Cases

🔗 User Scraping

Scraping users from public Telegram groups

🔗 Scraping all messages

Scraping all messages from public Telegram groups

Collected Data

Works with public channels and groups.

Message

• Post link (url)
• Post ID (post_id)
• Channel/group username without @ (channel)
• Post text with HTML (message_text)
• Same text without HTML (message_text_plain) — for filters, search, and output
• Date in ISO (message_date)
• Views (views) — as in Telegram: 15.5K, 1.2M, etc.; only for channels, empty for groups
• Video notice (message_video_notice) — if the post contains a video but the message_videos array has no URL, and this field is filled: the video can only be viewed in Telegram under your account (authorization required), there is no direct file link. This is not a scraping error — Telegram does not provide such videos without logging into an account

Post author

• Profile link (user_link)
• Name (user_name)
• Avatar URL (user_avatar)

Forward

• Forwarded from (forward_from)
• Source link (forward_from_url) — original URL, if available
• Explanation for missing link (forward_from_notice) — filled if forward_from_url is empty (e.g., "Source link not available in embed"): no direct link, the original might have been deleted, hidden, or unavailable for another reason. Not a scraper error

Reply

• URL of the message being replied to (reply_to_url)
• Post ID from URL (reply_to_post_id)
• Author of the original message (reply_to_author)
• Text of the original message, plain (reply_to_text)

Reactions

• Total sum of all reactions (reactions_total) — number as a string; K/M/B are recalculated

Chat/channel metadata

Loaded once per channel, duplicated in every row of the post.

• Title (chat_title)
• Number of subscribers/members (chat_members)
• Online (chat_online) — only for groups; number of users online at the start of scraping the channel, not updated during scraping. Empty for channels
• Description, plain text (chat_description)
• Media and link counters (chat_photos, chat_videos, chat_files, chat_links) — only for channels

Arrays

reactions — fields emoji, count (as in Telegram: 16, 1.2K). Who reacted is not collected: only the emoji type and total count are available

message_photos — field url; album — multiple rows.

message_videos — field url. If there is no URL but the post has a video — see message_video_notice (viewing only after logging into Telegram)

links — field url; external links from the post text. Links like t.me/username without a path do not go here (these are mentions).

mentions — field username (@username); from t.me/username links and @username text in <a>.

Capabilities

• Flexible query normalization (see Queries)
• Filters by date (dateFrom, dateTo) and forwarded messages (skipForwards)
• Photo and video albums — multiple URLs in one post

Use Cases

• Collecting content from channel or group posts
• Monitoring reactions, views, and forwards

Queries

Public channels and groups are supported. All formats are normalized to https://t.me/{username}:

Query	Behavior
@username	channel or group, starts from Start message number
username	same
https://t.me/username	same
t.me/username	same
https://t.me/s/username	same
https://t.me/username/123	channel or group, starts from post #123 (Start message number is ignored)

Invalid query → Unknown query line in log, empty result.

Examples:

https://t.me/a_parser
@a_parser
https://t.me/a_parser/100

Output Results Examples

A-Parser supports flexible result formatting thanks to the built-in Template Toolkit, allowing it to output results in any form, as well as structured formats like CSV or JSON.

Default Output

Result format:

$channel/$post_id: $message_text_plain ($views views, $reactions_total reactions)

Result example:

a_parser/1234: these are filters) ( views, 0 reactions)
a_parser/85962: Google rolled out something new for protection) ( views, 2 reactions)

Output to CSV Table

Result format:

[% tools.CSVline(channel, post_id, message_text_plain, views, reactions_total) %]

Result example:

a_parser,1234,"these are filters)",,0
a_parser,85962,"Google rolled out something new for protection)",,2

Filtering and skip posts

A row does not enter the result if:

1. Date is outside the Date from / Date to range
2. Skip forwards is enabled and the post is forwarded

When filtering by date or forward, the post is considered found, and the channel traversal continues.

Channel traversal stops when:

• after the last found post, Max empty posts IDs have been checked consecutively without new finds;
• or a series of empty posts from the beginning (if no posts have been found yet).

Results Processing

A-Parser allows processing results directly during scraping; in this section, we have listed the most popular cases for the Telegram scraper.

Filtering Results by Word Occurrence in Message

You need to add a filter and select $message_text - Message text from the dropdown list. Select type RegEx match. In the regex field, enter the regex with the required words:

\bscraper\b|\bGoogle\b|\byandex\b|\bscraper\b|\bProxy\b|\bDorks\b

\b - word boundary

| - OR

is - regex flag

Download example

How to import an example into A-Parser

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tip

See also:

• Using regular expressions
• Result filters

Possible Settings

note

General settings for all scrapers

Parameter	Default value	Description
Max empty posts	1000	How many empty IDs in a row to try after the last found post before stopping the channel crawl. This is not a limit for saved posts
Start message number	1	The post number to start the crawl from (if the query does not contain /123)
Skip forwards	☐	Do not save forwarded messages
Date from		Date from, inclusive. Format YYYY-MM-DD
Date to		Date to, not inclusive. Format YYYY-MM-DD