Referral system in Telegram bots

Hello everyone! Surely you have seen in various bots a referral link like https://t.me/ <username_bot>? Start = <number>. Usually, the Telegram ID of the referrer is indicated as a number. In this article, I will explain how to handle such links in my bot.

To develop bots, I use the pytelegrambotapi Python library.

I will omit the process of creating a bot via @BotFather , I will proceed directly to the code. There is a file config.py



with the TOKEN variable, which stores the bot's token. bot.py



We will "chemize" the file . Let's write a handler for the / start command and display everything that is stored in the message object.

import telebot

import config

bot = telebot.TeleBot(config.TOKEN)


@bot.message_handler(commands=["start"])
def start_command_handler(msg):
    print(msg)


if __name__ == '__main__':
    bot.polling(none_stop=True)

      
      

        
        
        
      

    
        
        
        
      
      

        
        
        
      

    
    

'text': '/start'.



https://t.me/<_>?start=test 10- print(msg.text)

/start test



. , msg.text



, .

. , /start , /start



. ( /start test



). ID .

@bot.message_handler(commands=["start"])
def start_command_handler(msg):
    user_id = msg.from_user.id
    referrer = None

    if " " in msg.text:
        referrer_candidate = msg.text.split()[1]
				#  
      
      

        
        
        
      

    
        
        
        
      
      

        
        
        
      

    
    

https://t.me/<_>?start=test test2, test2 msg.text, , , test2 . msg.text



. , . (msg.text.split()



), ( , , ?).

, . , , . - "" , ID - . .

@bot.message_handler(commands=["start"])
def start_command_handler(msg):
    user_id = msg.from_user.id
    referrer = None

    #    -    
    if " " in msg.text:
        referrer_candidate = msg.text.split()[1]

        #     
        try:
            referrer_candidate = int(referrer_candidate)
						#  
        except ValueError:
            pass
      
      

        
        
        
      

    
        
        
        
      
      

        
        
        
      

    
    

, try... except



int()



. referer



, int()



ValueError

referer . : int()



"-101" -101. referer . , .

TG ID. , . . ID , user_id = msg.from_user.id

@bot.message_handler(commands=["start"])
def start_command_handler(msg):
    user_id = msg.from_user.id
    referrer = None

    #    -    
    if " " in msg.text:
        referrer_candidate = msg.text.split()[1]

        #     
        try:
            referrer_candidate = int(referrer_candidate)

            #    TG ID  TG ID 
            if user_id != referrer_candidate:
              #  
							pass

        except ValueError:
            pass
      
      

        
        
        
      

    
        
        
        
      
      

        
        
        
      

    
    

, get_all_users(), . , , .

@bot.message_handler(commands=["start"])
def start_command_handler(msg):
    user_id = msg.from_user.id
    referrer = None

    #    -    
    if " " in msg.text:
        referrer_candidate = msg.text.split()[1]

        #     
        try:
            referrer_candidate = int(referrer_candidate)

            #    TG ID  TG ID 
            #  ,       
            if user_id != referrer_candidate and referrer_candidate in get_all_users():
                referer = referrer_candidate

        except ValueError:
            pass
      
      

        
        
        
      

    
        
        
        
      
      

        
        
        
      

    
    

What should be done if the user already has a referrer? After all, we will not give out a bonus for the referred referral every time you use a referral link, it will simply ruin us. Therefore it is necessary to write a check. Let's write a function has_referrer()



that will return True if the user has a referrer and False if it doesn't. It is logical to write it at the beginning for optimization.

@bot.message_handler(commands=["start"])
def start_command_handler(msg):
    user_id = msg.from_user.id
    #      
    if not has_referrer():
        referrer = None

        #    -    
        if " " in msg.text:
            referrer_candidate = msg.text.split()[1]

            #     
            try:
                referrer_candidate = int(referrer_candidate)

                #    TG ID  TG ID 
                #  ,       
                if user_id != referrer_candidate and referrer_candidate in get_all_users():
                    referer = referrer_candidate

            except ValueError:
                pass
      
      

        
        
        
      

    
        
        
        
      
      

        
        
        
      

    
    

Hope you find this article helpful!