gplus-archiver

A tool for exporting G+ data. Currently only archiving Community content. It's recommended to export your own personal data using the Google Takeout tool.

Note: the tool is very much a work-in-progress, but I hope to have it polished enough to be widely applicable in the coming months as the Google+ death clock continues ticking.

Limitations

The Google API quota is 10,000 queries per day and this is a query-intensive process. It's possible to request a quota increase, but otherwise quotas reset at midnight PST.

Usage

Simply enter the URL for your Community and press the "Archive It!" button. The tool strips out the community ID from the URL and uses it to query the Google+ API and extract all the public posts within.

If the community has previously been archived, the resultant export is made available for download on the index page.

How it works

The Google+ "Activities" REST API is queried with an "in:" search string (this also works in the Google+ search bar to search within a community). The result set is limited to 20 "activities" at a time, so a nextPageToken is returned to allow for leafing through results, which are then exported as JSON data and zipped up for easy download.

Example:

• The Lone Wolf Roleplaying community url is: https://plus.google.com/communities/116965157741523529510
• The community ID is the number after the last forward slash, ie. 116965157741523529510
• The Google+ API query string would then be: in:116965157741523529510

Changing how it works

It should be relatively simply to use any other query strings for different types of searches. The below information could be useful for this. for sharing this information). Depending on the search query used, the code may need to be modified to work on Comments or People objects instead of Activities.

Google+ Search Queries

Credit to +Thomas Unterstenhoefer for this information.

The Operators and the Syntax

from Find posts from a specific user or user ID.

The ID, or url_id, is the string of numbers at the end of a profile’s URL.

Examples: from:me from:google from:116431277733031496736

has Find posts with specific content.

Examples: has:attachment has:video has:photo has:doc has:slides has:spreadsheet has:poll

before & after Find posts posted before or after a certain date.

Date formats are yyyy/mm/dd or yyyy-mm-dd

Examples: before: 2015/3/14 after: 2014-03-14

commenter Find posts commented on by a specific user.

Examples: commenter:me commenter:116431277733031496736

mention Find posts that mention a specific user.

Examples: mention:me mention:116431277733031496736

in/community/collection Find posts in any community or collection, or in a specific community or collection by ID.

The community or collection ID is the string of numbers and letters at the end of a community or collection’s URL.

Examples: in:community in:collection in:107259666512014228221 in:s5DaIE community:107259666512014228221 collection:s5DaIE

AND, OR & NOT You can refine your search to include multiple queries or exclude certain terms by using logic operators. Enter these operators in all capital letters.

You can search for multiple operators without use of the word „AND.“ You can also replace „NOT“ with a minus sign.

Examples: from:google AND from:cloud from:google from:home has:video has:doc OR has:ppt OR has:spreadsheet from:116899029375914044550 NOT has:attachment

Source https://support.google.com/plus/answer/1669519

UPDATE 2018-10-13 And wow, the brought a useful UI to the iOS app https://plus.google.com/+ThomasUnterstenhoefer/posts/Q1zGnr2cLKr>>

Installation

The tool is a PHP web app using the Slim micro-framework to leverage the Google API PHP Client. Dependencies are managed by Composer. Templates are powered by Twig template engine and Pure CSS.

Installation Steps:

1. Obtain Google+ API or OAUTH credentials from the Google API Console
2. Clone this repository
3. Rename .\lib\constants.php to .\lib\secret.php or update the composer.json file to replace the autoload files as necessary.
4. Configure the constants in the file from item 2:
   • If using an API key, define GAPI_API_KEY
   • If using OAUTH, define both GAPI_CLIENT_ID and GAPI_CLIENT_SECRET
   • Finally, configure the path to the ARCHIVE_DIRECTORY
5. Run composer install to install the dependencies.
6. Configure your web server to point to the .\public directory as the document root.
   • An Apache .htaccess file is included to allow for "pretty" URLs

Contributing

I'm no PHP expert by any means and I do have a day job, a family, and other responsibilities, but I hope to maintain this tool well enough to get everyone's information exported before the Google+ shutdown.

If you have ideas for improvements or notice issues in the code, please feel free to contact me and submit a pull request. If you wish to fork the code and run with it, please do so by all means and be sure to view the LICENSE.md included in this repository.

About

I have been an avid G+'er for about 1.5 years after discovering a vibrant tabletop RPG gaming community there. The announcement of Google+'s demise sparked a flurry of activity and concerns over losing the fantasic repository of ideas and information contained within these various G+ communities and no apparent or easy way to export this information. As such, I set to work on creating this tool to help preserve this wealth of information.

Thanks, and I hope someone finds this thing useful.