article.md

Simple Telegram Screener

In our current times staying on top of the latest signals can be challenging. Especially if the screeners are not automated to provide the most up-to-date information on the latest signals. That's why tying a screener to telegram can make one aware of a lot of opportunities. It can notify you when a new signal is found (and we all get the dopamine hit when a new notification arrives on our smartphones). You can also share this screener with people for fun (and of course profit).

To be able to follow along you

• know you way around Python
• have a Telegram account
• have a screener, that outputs a string when it finds a new signal

Working with telegram

Although there are many excellent solutions to sending your signals over to telegram I preffer to use pyTelegramBotAPI - you just need a token and you are off to the races.

import telebot

bot = telebot.TeleBot("TOKEN", parse_mode=None)

How to get your telegram token

In order to get your telegram token you need to go through a couple of steps:

1. Open Telegram and find @botfarther
2. [Optional] To see all available commands type /help
3. To create a new bot just write /newbot
4. Go through the prompts from botfather
5. At the end it will give you your API key.

How to get your channel id

1. Login with a browser version of telegram: https://web.telegram.org/
2. Click on your channel.
3. At the end of your current url after the # should be your channel id. It always starts with a minus.

Combining it with your screener:

import telebot


def run_screener() -> str:
    '''
        This is where you would develop your screener.
        It is important to note - you should return a string.
    '''
    return "I generated a new signal!"

TOKEN = "<YOUR-TOKEN-HERE>"
CHANNEL = "<YOUR-CHANNEL-ID-HERE>"
tb = telebot.TeleBot(TOKEN, parse_mode=None)

msg = run_screener()

tb.send_message(CHANNEL, msg)

However do note that this bot is only sending messages to a telegram channel and does not respond to any messages, targeted at it. But for our use case, this is plenty.

Running the screener on a schedule

As shown above, to send a single message its quite simple. A way to automate it is to host that script and run it on a schedule using crontab - good article on it.

Another way to automate it, within python is to use a libary to automate this process. I used schedule.

Something to take into an account is that you need to wrap all of your code into a single function. A simple refactor you could do is shown below.

import telebot


TOKEN = "<YOUR-TOKEN-HERE>"
CHANNEL = "<YOUR-CHANNEL-ID-HERE>"

tb = telebot.TeleBot(TOKEN, parse_mode=None)

def run_screener() -> str:
    '''
        This is where you would develop your screener.
        It is important to note - you should return a string.
    '''
    return "I generated a new signal!"

def send_telegram_signals() -> None:
    msg = run_screener()
    tb.send_message(CHANNEL, msg)

Adding schedule

Lets assume you want to send a message every hour, exactly at 00.

import schedule

schedule.every().hour.at("00").do(send_telegram_signals)

Easy enough.

Combinding it all together

import telebot
import schedule



TOKEN = "<YOUR-TOKEN-HERE>"
CHANNEL = "<YOUR-CHANNEL-ID-HERE>"

tb = telebot.TeleBot(TOKEN, parse_mode=None)

def run_screener() -> str:
    '''
        This is where you would develop your screener.
        It is important to note - you should return a string.
    '''
    return "I generated a new signal!"

def send_telegram_signals() -> None:
    msg = run_screener()
    tb.send_message(CHANNEL, msg)


if __name__ == '__main__':
    schedule.every().hour.at("00").do(send_telegram_signals)

Conclusion

In this article I showcased how easy it is to send your screener notifications and signals over to telegram and run it on a schedule. That's all there is to it.

If you have any questions, suggestions or thoughts, always feel free to share them with me! And if you like to see more how-tos on deploying your screeners and strategies, make sure to follow me and receive the most recent updates.