A python script for downloading posts from a facebook user, group, event, or page as a CSV file.
To use this script, you'll need an access token from facebook. You can get one from facebook's Graph API Explorer by clicking "Get Token", giving it whatever permissions you wish, and copying the text in the token box: https://developers.facebook.com/tools/explorer/145634995501895/ (n.b. these tokens expire after a few hours. If this happens, don't worry, just go get another token. They're free and unlimited!)
You'll also need to know the facebook ID of the page you want to download posts from. Often, this can be found in the URL of the page. Otherwise, here is a great tool to find it for you: http://findmyfacebookid.com/
You'll need these libraries: facebook and pandas. On linux, you can install them with the command:
sudo pip install facebook pandas
To use the script, download (or git clone) the facebook_post_dumper.py file. Open it with your favorite editor and fill in the token and pid values near the top with the token and page ID from facebook. If you like, you can also change the max_posts variable to increase or decrease the number of posts downloaded. Then save the file and run the script.
Planned Features:
- command line arguments
- optional additional post data
- output file naming
- image downloading
- link downloading
Q&A: Q: It's slow! A: Yup. Facebook does that to keep us from overwhelming their servers with too many requests. (DoS anyone?)
Q: How do I edit/run the script? A: Shttp://www.codecademy.com is an excellent resource for newbies!
Q: The code's not pretty! A: Nope. It's simple and functional though.
Q: Why doesn't it do ___? A: Because I made it to suit my own needs. Feel free to send suggestions, though!
Q: ___ is better for this. A: Great, use it!
Q: I've got an error message! A: If it's a problem with my code, let me know so i can fix it!