telegram-cloud

A personal, secure, free, unlimited cloud storage based on telegram.

Usage

• Use bot father in telegram to create a new bot, save the api_key generated.

• Create a new private channel in telegram. Open telegram on web, navigate to this private channel.

• From the URL, copy last part, a number that starts with -100. This is your channel ID.

• Add newly created bot as an admin to this private channel. (So that bot can upload files to private channel.)

• Clone code, Create a .env file in current directory with below variables set

• Run source run.sh / bash run.sh in terminal to run the program in local.

  Access Homepage at: localhost:443 [SSL Enabled]

• To run as container, Run docker-compose up -d, access homepage at machine-ip-or-hostname:443

  .env can be deleted once compose setup starts up.

  API_KEY="get this api key from telegram botfather"
  CHANNEL_ID="channel id which will be used for file storage"
  # Below 2 env vars creates a user for login. Defaults are used if not specified (Defaults: user, password).
  APP_USER_NAME="SomeUserName-Use the same during login"
  APP_PASSWORD="SomePassword-Use the same during login"
  # Use True | False in below option to enable / disable encrypted uploads.
  FILE_ENCRYPTION="True"
  # File encryption adds some overhead, increasing final upload size.
  # Like a file that is originally 17MB, becomes 21MB after encryption. So this is not uploaded as current api limit is 20 mb only.
  LOGGING_LEVEL="DEBUG"

Features

• Simple one-user login functionality. [Created from secrets specified in .env]
• Upload (Encrypt / Plain), Download, Delete files <= 50 MB. [Current telegram bot limit] [Workaround to support large file uploads is in planning]
• File Sharing via unique link.
• Search by filename across directories and nested directories.
• Simple UI, Shows the total cloud storage space consumed using this app.
• If telegram files uploaded using this app are deleted manually using app / web, Revalidate Schema feature will check entire schema and removes what is removed from channel.

Notes

• The files uploaded using this app are tracked via a file named schema.json, it is persisted across server restarts using a docker volume.
• Deleting that volume will start the application empty next time. While the files are still available to you on telegram server, you can't see them and work on them using this app if schema.json is lost. [Use schema persist and recover features to avoid this]
• Please ensure to create a private channel with only you as a subscriber.

Feature Addition

• File Sharing

  • Individual files can be shared by logged in user. Downloadable with unique link by any one without login.
  • Sharing on a file expires in 100 mins or 2 download attempts, Whichever is first.
  • Shared Files are not stored on server, each time fetched from telegram, decrypted, sent as download.
  • Active file shares details are stored in-memory, and are lost if server is restarted.

• Encrypted Files

  • All files are encrypted before uploading to telegram, Unless disabled manually via env setting FILE_ENCRYPTION=FALSE.
  • Files are downloaded form telegram, decrypted first, before sending file to user.

• Bulk Upload / Download CLI tool

  • Run python backupper.py --help to get started, follow the help content provided by CLI.
  • To Upload a local folder: python backupper.py upload --path C:/Users/username/Desktop/ImportantFiles [--path_in_server Backup] [--dry_run]
    • Uploads all sub-directories, files in the local folder ImportantFiles to a folder in server named Backup.
    • path_in_server is optional to specify, default if unspecified will create ImportantFiles folder in root directory.
    • --dry_run Specifying this will just print summary of uploads, but doesn't actually upload anything. It is better to run using this arg first to check if everything is as expected or not, later run without specifying this argument to do the actual uploads to server.
  • To download a directory in server to local: python backupper.py download --path_in_server Backup/ImportantFiles [--path C:/Users/username/Downloads] [--dry_run]
    • path_in_server - specify the folder path in server that needs to be downloaded. path is optional, Uses ./Downloads in current directory as default.
    • --dry_run - To just see download summary, not to actual download anything. A harmless trial run. Do not specify this if you actually want to download.

  This tool currently only works if you are running the server not from docker but as a standalone python server. This is because this cli tool directly invokes BotActions class, the updated schema after upload action will be from local schema/ folder.

• Schema Backup

  • Now migrating app from one machine to another is easy.
  • Use persist button from home page to upload your current schema to telegram itself, which will give you a file_id as response, you need to save it somewhere.(It will be shown only once)
  • Once you start the server in new machine, Use the same file_id to later recover this schema using recover button in homepage.

    This will overwrite any schema changes you have made after previous persist (In new / old machine). Recovers schema to the point where it was backed up.