Build a Price Monitoring Bot with Python and Telegram

tags: python, bot, automation, tutorial

Imagine waking up every morning to a message on your phone, informing you of the latest price drops on your favorite products. No more endless browsing, no more missed deals. You can have this superpower with a simple price monitoring bot, built using Python and Telegram.

Getting Started with Telegram Bots

To start building our bot, we need to create a Telegram account and talk to the BotFather, a bot that helps us create new bots. After creating our bot, we'll receive an API token that we'll use to interact with the Telegram API. We'll also need to choose a library to interact with the Telegram API in Python - python-telegram-bot is a popular choice.

Setting Up the Development Environment

Before we start coding, we need to install the required libraries. We'll need python-telegram-bot to interact with the Telegram API, and requests to fetch product prices from websites. We can install these libraries using pip:

pip install python-telegram-bot requests

We'll also need to install a library to parse HTML, such as beautifulsoup4. This will help us extract prices from product pages:

pip install beautifulsoup4

Building the Price Monitoring Bot

Our bot will need to perform two main tasks: fetching product prices and sending updates to users. We'll use the requests library to fetch product prices, and the python-telegram-bot library to send updates.

Fetching Product Prices

To fetch product prices, we'll use the requests library to send an HTTP request to the product page, and then parse the HTML response using beautifulsoup4. Here's an example of how we can do this:

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

def fetch_price(url):
    response = requests.get(url)
    soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, 'html.parser')
    price_element = soup.find('span', {'class': 'price'})
    return price_element.text.strip()

url = 'https://example.com/product'
price = fetch_price(url)
print(price)

This code sends an HTTP request to the product page, parses the HTML response, and extracts the price element. We can then use this price to compare with the previous price and send an update if the price has dropped.

Sending Updates to Users

To send updates to users, we'll use the python-telegram-bot library. We'll need to create a bot instance and define a function to handle incoming messages. Here's an example of how we can do this:

from telegram.ext import Updater, CommandHandler, MessageHandler

TOKEN = 'YOUR_API_TOKEN'

def start(update, context):
    context.bot.send_message(chat_id=update.effective_chat.id, text='Hello! I\'m your price monitoring bot.')

def main():
    updater = Updater(TOKEN, use_context=True)
    dispatcher = updater.dispatcher

    start_handler = CommandHandler('start', start)
    dispatcher.add_handler(start_handler)

    updater.start_polling()
    updater.idle()

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

This code creates a bot instance, defines a function to handle the /start command, and starts the bot. We can then use this bot to send updates to users when a price drops.

Putting it All Together

Now that we have the basic components of our bot, let's put them together. We'll create a bot that fetches product prices, compares them with the previous price, and sends an update if the price has dropped. Here's an example of how we can do this:

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
from telegram.ext import Updater, CommandHandler, MessageHandler

TOKEN = 'YOUR_API_TOKEN'
URL = 'https://example.com/product'

def fetch_price(url):
    response = requests.get(url)
    soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, 'html.parser')
    price_element = soup.find('span', {'class': 'price'})
    return price_element.text.strip()

def start(update, context):
    context.bot.send_message(chat_id=update.effective_chat.id, text='Hello! I\'m your price monitoring bot.')

def main():
    updater = Updater(TOKEN, use_context=True)
    dispatcher = updater.dispatcher

    start_handler = CommandHandler('start', start)
    dispatcher.add_handler(start_handler)

    previous_price = None
    while True:
        price = fetch_price(URL)
        if previous_price is None or price != previous_price:
            updater.bot.send_message(chat_id='YOUR_CHAT_ID', text=f'Price update: {price}')
            previous_price = price

    updater.start_polling()
    updater.idle()

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

This code creates a bot that fetches the product price, compares it with the previous price, and sends an update if the price has dropped.

Making it More Robust

Our bot is now functional, but it's not very robust. We need to add some error handling to make sure it can recover from failures. We can use try-except blocks to catch exceptions and send error messages to the user. We can also use a database to store the previous prices, so we don't lose them if the bot restarts.

Using a Database

We can use a database like SQLite to store the previous prices. We'll need to install the sqlite3 library and create a database file. Here's an example of how we can do this:

import sqlite3

conn = sqlite3.connect('prices.db')
cursor = conn.cursor()

cursor.execute('CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS prices (url TEXT, price TEXT)')
conn.commit()

def store_price(url, price):
    cursor.execute('INSERT INTO prices VALUES (?, ?)', (url, price))
    conn.commit()

def get_price(url):
    cursor.execute('SELECT price FROM prices WHERE url = ?', (url,))
    return cursor.fetchone()[0]

This code creates a database file, creates a table to store the prices, and defines functions to store and retrieve prices.

Conclusion

Building a price monitoring bot with Python and Telegram is a fun and rewarding project. With this bot, you can stay up-to-date with the latest price drops on your favorite products. You can customize the bot to fetch prices from different websites, and even add more features like price alerts and product recommendations. So why not give it a try? Start building your own price monitoring bot today, and start saving money on your favorite products. Join the conversation in the comments below, and share your own experiences with building bots. Happy coding!

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