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Downloading Channel Media

download-media.Rmd

Introduction

This vignette shows how to download media (photos/videos/documents) from a Telegram channel using download_channel_media().

Offline Demo (No Telegram Connection)

To keep this vignette fully reproducible, the output below is generated from a small bundled sample dataset. The commands shown are real; if you have credentials and a live session, you can run them by setting eval=TRUE in your environment.

Setup and Authentication 

library(telegramR)
library(dplyr)

# Replace these with your own API ID and Hash
api_id <- 123456
api_hash <- "0123456789abcdef0123456789abcdef"

client <- TelegramClient$new("my_session", api_id, api_hash)
client$start()

Download Media 

# Download media into ./downloads
media <- download_channel_media(
  client,
  "telegram",
  limit = 200,
  media_types = c("photo", "video"),
  start_date = "2025-01-01",
  end_date = "2025-02-01",
  out_dir = "downloads"
)
# Inspect results
media
#> # A tibble: 2 × 9
#>   message_id channel_id channel_username channel_title date               
#>        <dbl>      <dbl> <chr>            <chr>         <dttm>             
#> 1      28508 1149277960 ShrikeNews       Шрайк Ньюс    2026-03-06 11:22:24
#> 2      28495 1149277960 ShrikeNews       Шрайк Ньюс    2026-03-06 08:48:16
#> # ℹ 4 more variables: media_type <chr>, file_path <chr>,
#> #   original_filename <chr>, error <chr>
photo_path <- media %>% 
  filter(media_type == "photo") %>% 
  slice(1) %>% 
  pull(file_path)

pkg_path <- paste0("../", photo_path)

knitr::include_graphics(pkg_path)

Common Columns

The result is a tibble with one row per downloaded media item. Typical columns include:

  • message_id, channel_id, channel_username, channel_title
  • date, text, media_type
  • file_path, error

Tips

  • Use start_date/end_date to restrict the window and speed up downloads.
  • Use media_types to select only photos or only videos.
  • If you hit rate limits, add a small wait_time (e.g., wait_time = 1).
  • Some channels send photos as documents (image/*). download_channel_media() treats image as a photo-type alias when photo is requested.