🧠 What is pyteledb?

pyteledb is a Telegram-native persistence abstraction that uses Telegram itself as the storage layer. No external databases required — just your bot and a Telegram channel or group.

Key Concepts

• Telegram channel/group = your database
• Pinned message = root index
• Messages = records
• Bot API only — no MTProto, no user accounts

✨ Features

• 🔌 Zero external dependencies for storage — Telegram IS the database
• 🚀 Async-first design with httpx
• 💾 Optional local caching (memory or SQLite) for performance
• 🔒 Soft locking for write coordination
• 📦 Versioned records with optimistic concurrency
• 🔧 Crash-resilient with repair tools
• 📊 Built-in metrics and observability

📦 Installation

pip install pyteledb

# With SQLite cache support
pip install pyteledb[sqlite]

🚀 Quick Start

import asyncio
from pyteledb import TelegramDatabase, DatabaseConfig

async def main():
    config = DatabaseConfig(
        bot_token="YOUR_BOT_TOKEN",
        chat_id=-100123456789,  # Your channel/group ID
        db_name="my_database",
    )

    async with TelegramDatabase(config) as db:
        # Initialize (creates root index if not exists)
        await db.initialize()

        # Insert a record
        record = await db.insert({
            "user_id": 12345,
            "name": "Alice",
            "score": 100,
        })
        print(f"Created record: {record.id}")

        # Update
        await db.update(record.id, {
            "user_id": 12345,
            "name": "Alice",
            "score": 150,  # New high score!
        })

        # Get database info
        info = await db.info()
        print(f"Total records: {info['record_count']}")

asyncio.run(main())

📁 Project Structure

pyteledb/
├── core/       # Database logic (TelegramDatabase, Record, RootIndex)
├── telegram/   # Bot API client (messages, files, pins)
├── storage/    # Serialization, checksums, versioning
├── cache/      # Memory and SQLite caching
├── ops/        # Rate limiting, write queue, metrics
└── utils/      # Logging, time, ID generation

⚡ Performance Model

pyteledb is designed for small to medium Telegram bots with predictable workloads:

• Never scans full chat history — fetches only required message IDs
• Uses local cache for frequently accessed records
• Rate-limit aware with automatic throttling
• Prefers editMessage over sendMessage for updates

🛡️ Consistency & Safety

Telegram provides no transactions, so pyteledb implements:

• Record versioning for optimistic concurrency
• Soft locks for write coordination
• Idempotent, retry-safe writes
• Repair tools for crash recovery

🎯 Target Use Cases

• ✅ Small to medium Telegram bots
• ✅ Developer tooling
• ✅ Predictable workloads
• ✅ Human-inspectable data

🚫 Not Designed For

• ❌ High-throughput applications
• ❌ Complex queries (SQL/NoSQL parity)
• ❌ Multi-service orchestration

📚 Documentation

• Architecture Guide
• API Reference
• Contributing Guide

📄 License

This project is licensed under the GPL-3.0 License — see the LICENSE file for details.

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please read our Contributing Guide first.