Social Archiver

A simple tool written in python 2.7 that downloads your pictures, data, and private messages from Facebook. Once downloaded the tool creates Mbox formatted emails of your private conversations that can be imported into any standards compliant email client that can read Mbox files.

WARNING - this tool is not ready for prime time yet

Unless you already have a Facebook App auth token, this tool will not function correctly and do what it is supposed to. I'm working on this as much as possible, but development takes time. If you are handy with Python, feel free to get in touch and help ~ Brennan Novak or @brennannovak

Setup

Copy config.yaml.template and change the name to config.yaml

Install python dependencies $ pip install -r requirements.txt

Now you have two options with how to proceed. Option A) is using Facebooks Graph Explorer to generate your auth token. Option B) is to create your own Facebook "App" and generate your auth tokens that way. The first option is fine if you're doing a one time export and deleting your account. The later is better if you want to keep using Facebook and periodically re-download updates (feature not implemented yet).

Setup A) Using Graph Explorer

• Go to Facebook's Developer Platform page.
• Click on the top menu "Tools" and then select "Graph Explorer"
• Click on "Get Access Token" then copy the value in the field on the left labeled "Access Token"
• Edit the facebook_user_token value in config.yaml with what you copied from Facebook

Setup B) Create New App

• Go to Facebook's Developer Platform
• Click on the top menu "Apps" and then "Create a New App"
• Open the config.yaml file you created in step 1
• Copy the "App ID" on Facebook into the field facebook_app_id in config.yaml
• Copy the "App Secret" on Facebook into the field facebook_secret in config.yaml

Using The Tool

From the command line run $ python grab.py

There are a few arguments you can pass to the tool:

• friends downloads basic data & pictures of your friends
• photos downloads photos you are tagged in
• messages downloads your private messages and formats them as Mbox style emails

By default the tool only gets your profile data & photo. To choose extra downloads pass one of the arguments $ python grab.py messages it's ok to all all three arguments at once :P