Using Filters

So far we’ve seen how to register a callback function that executes every time an update comes from the server, but there’s much more than that to come.

Here we’ll discuss about filters. Filters enable a fine-grain control over what kind of updates are allowed or not to be passed in your callback functions, based on their inner details.

Single Filters

Let’s start right away with a simple example:

This example will show you how to only handle messages containing a Sticker object and ignore any other message. Filters are passed as the first argument of the decorator:
```
from pyrogram import filters


@app.on_message(filters.sticker)
async def my_handler(client, message):
    print(message)
```

or, without decorators. Here filters are passed as the second argument of the handler constructor; the first is the callback function itself:

from pyrogram import filters
from pyrogram.handlers import MessageHandler

async def my_handler(client, message):
    print(message)

app.add_handler(MessageHandler(my_handler, filters.sticker))

Combining Filters

Filters can be used in a more advanced way by inverting and combining more filters together using bitwise operators ~, & and |:

Use ~ to invert a filter (behaves like the not operator).
Use & and | to merge two filters (behave like and, or operators respectively).

Here are some examples:

Message is a text message or a photo.

@app.on_message(filters.text | filters.photo)
async def my_handler(client, message):
    print(message)

Message is a sticker and is coming from a channel or a private chat.

@app.on_message(filters.sticker & (filters.channel | filters.private))
async def my_handler(client, message):
    print(message)

Advanced Filters

Some filters, like command() or regex() can also accept arguments:

Message is either a /start or /help command.

@app.on_message(filters.command(["start", "help"]))
async def my_handler(client, message):
    print(message)

Message is a text message or a media caption matching the given regex pattern.

@app.on_message(filters.regex("pyrogram"))
async def my_handler(client, message):
    print(message)

More handlers using different filters can also live together.

@app.on_message(filters.command("start"))
async def start_command(client, message):
    print("This is the /start command")


@app.on_message(filters.command("help"))
async def help_command(client, message):
    print("This is the /help command")


@app.on_message(filters.chat("ElectrogramChat"))
async def from_pyrogramchat(client, message):
    print("New message in @ElectrogramChat")