govd

a telegram bot for downloading media from various platforms

this project was born after the discontinuation of a highly popular bot known as uvd, and draws significant inspiration from yt-dlp

• official instance: @govd_bot
• support group: govdsupport

---

• dependencies
• installation
  • build
  • docker
• options
• authentication
• proxying
• todo

dependencies

• ffmpeg >= 7.x (*)
• libheif >= 1.19.7
• pkg-config
• mysql or mariadb

note: libav shared libraries must be installed on the system in order to build the bot.

installation

build

this method only works on linux and macos, if you want to build the bot on windows, check docker installation instead.

1. clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/govdbot/govd.git && cd govd

2. edit the .env file to set the database properties.
   for enhanced security, it is recommended to change the DB_PASSWORD property in the .env file.

3. make sure your database is up and running.

4. build and run the bot:

   sh build.sh && ./govd

docker (recommended)

Warning

this method is currently not working due to a wrong version of the libav (ffmpeg) library in the docker image. feel free to open a PR if you can fix it.

1. build the image using the dockerfile:

   docker build -t govd-bot .

2. update the .env file to ensure the database properties match the environment variables defined for the mariadb service in the docker-compose.yml file.
   for enhanced security, it is recommended to change the MYSQL_PASSWORD property in docker-compose.yaml and ensure DB_PASSWORD in .env matches it.

   the following line in the .env file must be set as:

   DB_HOST=db
   

3. run the compose to start all services:

   docker compose up -d

options

variable	description	default
DB_HOST	database host	localhost
DB_PORT	database port	3306
DB_NAME	database name	govd
DB_USER	database user	govd
DB_PASSWORD	database password	password
BOT_API_URL	telegram bot api url	https://api.telegram.org
BOT_TOKEN	telegram bot token	12345678:ABC-DEF1234ghIkl-zyx57W2P0s
CONCURRENT_UPDATES	max concurrent updates handled	50
LOG_DISPATCHER_ERRORS	log dispatcher errors	0
DOWNLOADS_DIR	directory for downloaded files	downloads
HTTP_PROXY (?)	http proxy (optional)
HTTPS_PROXY (?)	https proxy (optional)
NO_PROXY (?)	no proxy domains (optional)
REPO_URL	project repository url	https://github.com/govdbot/govd
PROFILER_PORT	port for profiler http server (pprof)	0 (disabled)

you can configure specific extractors options with ext-cfg.yaml file. documentation is not available yet, but you can check the source code for more information.

Important

to avoid limits on files, you should host your own telegram botapi and set BOT_API_URL variable according. public bot instance is currently running under a botapi fork, tdlight-telegram-bot-api, but you can use the official botapi client too.

proxying

there are two types of proxying available: http and edge.

• http proxy: this is a standard http proxy that can be used to route requests through a proxy server. you can set the HTTP_PROXY and HTTPS_PROXY environment variables to use this feature. (SOCKS5 is supported too)
• edge proxy: this is a custom proxy that is used to route requests through a specific url. currenrly, you can only set this proxy with ext-cfg.yaml file. this is useful for routing requests through a specific server or service. however, this feature is not totally implemented yet.

note: by settings NO_PROXY environment variable, you can specify domains that should not be proxied.

authentication

some extractors require authentication to access the content. you can easily use cookies for that; simply export cookies from your browser in netscape format and place them in cookies folder (e.g. cookies/reddit.txt). you can easily export cookies using Get cookies.txt LOCALLY extension for your browser.

todo

• add more extractors
• switch to native libav
• add tests
• improve error handling
• add support for telegram webhooks
• switch to pgsql (?)
• better api (?)
• better docs with multiple readme

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