Welcome to our Image Search Telegram Bot tutorial! In this tutorial, we will be showing you how to create a simple image search bot that allows users to search for images within a Telegram chat.

Step 1: Create a Telegram bot

The first thing you will need to do is create a Telegram bot. To do this, you will need to have a Telegram account. If you don't have one, you can create one by downloading the Telegram app from the App Store or Google Play.

Once you have a Telegram account, follow these steps to create a bot:

Open the Telegram app and search for @BotFather.

Click on the @BotFather user and send a message saying "/newbot".

@BotFather will ask you for a name for your bot. Choose a name that is descriptive and easy to remember.

@BotFather will then ask you for a username for your bot. The username must end in "bot" and cannot contain spaces or special characters. Choose a username that is descriptive and easy to remember.

Once you have chosen a name and username for your bot, @BotFather will send you a message with a token that you will need to access the API. Save this token as you will need it later.

Step 2: Set up a Google API key

To search for images, we will be using the Google Custom Search API. In order to use this API, you will need to set up a Google API key.

To do this, follow these steps:

Go to the Google Cloud Console and log in with your Google account.

Click on the "Select a project" dropdown and create a new project.

Once your project is created, click on the "Enable APIs and Services" button.

Search for "Custom Search API" and click on the result.

Click on the "Enable" button to enable the API.

Click on the "Create Credentials" button and choose the "API key" option.

Your API key will be displayed on the next page. Save this key as you will need it later.

Step 3: Set up a Custom Search Engine

In order to use the Google Custom Search API, you will need to set up a Custom Search Engine. This will allow you to specify the websites that you want to search for images.

To do this, follow these steps:

Go to the Google Custom Search Engine page and log in with your Google account.

Click on the "New search engine" button.

Enter a name and description for your search engine and choose the websites that you want to search. You can also specify any sites that you want to exclude from the search.

Click on the "Create" button to create your search engine.

Once your search engine is created, click on the "Control Panel" button and then click on the "Basics" tab.

Under the "Sites to Search" section, click on the "Edit" button.

In the "Sites to search" field, enter the URL of the websites that you want to search for images. You can separate multiple websites with a comma.

Click on the "Save" button to save your changes.

Step 4: Create a Python script

Now that we have a Telegram bot and a Google API key, we can start creating our image search bot. To do this, we will be using Python. If you do not have Python installed on your computer, you can download it from the official Python website.

Once you have Python installed, follow these steps to create a Python script:

Open a text editor (such as Notepad or Sublime Text) and create a new file.

At the top of the file, import the necessary libraries. We will be using the python-telegram-bot and google-auth libraries:

import telegram
import google.auth
from googleapiclient.discovery import build

Next, we will define some variables that we will use later. First, we will define the API key and token that we obtained earlier:

API_KEY = "YOUR_API_KEY"
TOKEN = "YOUR_TOKEN"

We will also define the search engine ID that we obtained when setting up the Custom Search Engine:

SEARCH_ENGINE_ID = "YOUR_SEARCH_ENGINE_ID"

We will also define a function that will be used to authenticate and authorize the API call:

def get_service():
credentials = google.auth.default()
service = build("customsearch", "v1", credentials=credentials)
return service

Now, we will create a function that will be used to search for images. This function will take in a search query and return a list of image URLs:

def search_images(query):
service = get_service()
result = service.cse().list(q=query, cx=SEARCH_ENGINE_ID).execute()
items = result.get("items", [])
image_urls = []
for item in items:
image_urls.append(item["link"])
return image_urls

Next, we will create the main function that will be used to run the bot. This function will use the python-telegram-bot library to listen for messages and respond to them:

def main():
bot = telegram.Bot(TOKEN)
last_update_id = None
while True:
updates = bot.get_updates(offset=last_update_id, timeout=10)
for update in updates:
message = update.message
chat_id = message.chat.id
text = message.text
if text:
image_urls = search_images(text)
for url in image_urls:
bot.send_photo(chat_id=chat_id, photo=url)
last_update_id = update.update_id + 1

Finally, we will call the main function at the bottom of the script to start the bot:

if __name__ == "__main__":
main()

Step 5: Run the script

Now that we have our Python script set up, we can run it to start the bot. To do this, open a terminal window and navigate to the directory where you saved the script. Then, run the following command:

python image_search_bot.py

The bot should now be running and waiting for messages. You can test it by opening the Telegram app and sending a message to your bot. The bot should respond with a list of image URLs based on your search query.

Step 6: Deploy the bot

If you want to keep your bot running all the time, you will need to deploy it to a server. There are many options for hosting a Python script, including cloud services like AWS or Google Cloud.

To deploy your bot to a server, you will need to follow the steps for setting up your server and uploading your script. This may vary depending on your hosting service, but generally, you will need to:

Set up a server with a domain name and an IP address.

Install Python and any necessary libraries on the server.

Upload your script to the server using a tool like SFTP or FTP.

Run the script on the server using a command like

 python image_search_bot.py

Keep the script running by using a tool like nohup or screen.

That's it! You now have a fully functioning image search Telegram bot that allows users to search for images within a Telegram chat. We hope you found this tutorial helpful, and we encourage you to explore the many possibilities of building bots with the Telegram API and Python.