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.