Telegram Python ConversationHandler Remember Old Answers

Question

I am using This ConversationHandler Script as a basis for my program.

How can I retrieve a users answer from a previous state? For example, when the user is asked about their Bio, how can I print their Gender (that was the first thing that was asked)?

It looks like each function returns the next steps (GENDER->PHOTO->LOCATION->BIO) but is there a way to see what a previous input was?

Answer 1

I faced exactly the same issue where I needed to keep previous user answers for a conversation. Take a look at Handler documentation which is a base class for all handlers. It has parameter called pass_user_data. When set to True it passes user_data dictionary to your handler and it's related to the user the update was sent from. You can utilize it to achieve what you are looking for.

Let's say I have a conversation with an entry point and two states:

def build_conversation_handler():
    conversation_handler = ConversationHandler(
        entry_points=[CommandHandler('command', callback=show_options)],
        states={
            PROCESS_SELECT: [CallbackQueryHandler(process_select, pass_user_data=True)],
            SOME_OTHER: [MessageHandler(filters=Filters.text, callback=some_other, pass_user_data=True)],
        },
    )

Here are the handlers for the conversation:

def show_options(bot, update):
    button_list = [
        [InlineKeyboardButton("Option 1", callback_data="Option 1"),
         InlineKeyboardButton("Option 2", callback_data="Option 2")]]

    update.message.reply_text("Here are your options:", reply_markup=InlineKeyboardMarkup(button_list))
    return PROCESS_SELECT

def process_select(bot, update, user_data):
    query = update.callback_query
    selection = query.data
    # save selection into user data
    user_data['selection'] = selection
    return SOME_OTHER

def some_other(bot, update, user_data):
    # here I get my old selection
    old_selection = user_data['selection']

In the first handler I show user keyboard to choose an option, in the next handler I grab selection from callback query and store it into user data. The last handler is a message handler so it has no callback data, but since I added user_data to it I can access the dictionary with the data that I added previously. With this approach you can store and access anything between the handlers that will be related to a user.

Answer 2

I think the accepted solution is deprecated -

https://python-telegram-bot.readthedocs.io/en/stable/telegram.ext.handler.html

pass_user_data and pass_chat_data determine whether a dict you can use to keep any data in will be sent to the callback function. Related to either the user or the chat that the update was sent in. For each update from the same user or in the same chat, it will be the same dict.

Note that this is DEPRECATED, and you should use context based callbacks. See https://git.io/fxJuV for more info.

can store state in context.user_data['var'] = val