Facebook-Page-Crawler

A Python crawler uses Facebook Graph API to crawling fan page's public posts, comments, and reactions.

How does it work?

Using Facebook Graph API, that's all.

Installation

Facebook Page Crawler is built on Python 3 and use requests module. After clone this repository, use following command to install this module:

python setup.py develop

This crawler can be used under command line as:

facebook_page_crawler $app_id $app_secret $targets $since $until

Uninstallation

Run following command:

python setup.py develop --uninstall

How to use?

Facebook Page Crawler requires five arguments:

1. app_id: app_id of your Facebook app, the will used to access Facebook Graph API.
2. app_secret: app_secret of your Facebook app, the will used to access Facebook Graph API.
3. targets: The page name you want to crawl.
4. since: The date you want to start the crawling.
5. until: The date you want to finish the crawling.

And other additional arguments:

1. -att, --attachments: Default is False. Set to True will collect attachments of post and comments.
2. -r, --reactions: Default is False. Set to True will collect reactions data. Because the number of reactions is too large, use it CAREFULLY!!!
3. -api, --api-version: Default is v2.7. This will cange the version of Facebook Graph API, but currently this crawler only test under v2.7.
4. -l, --limit: Default is 100. This argument will limit the number of feed or comments of each request, larger number will decrease the number of request.
5. -d, --debug: Default is False. Enable debug mode to see additional information of crawling.
6. -p, --process_num: Default is the number of your CPU. Parallel processing feeds at the same time.
7. -w, --write: Default is True. Write to json files under Results/

You can use this command to find some help:

facebook_page_crawler --help

Example usage

facebook_page_crawler $APP_ID $APP_SECRET 'appledaily.tw' '2016-09-01 00:00:00' '2016-09-01 23:59:59'
facebook_page_crawler $APP_ID $APP_SECRET 'appledaily.tw' '2016-09-01 00:00:00' '2016-09-01 23:59:59' -r yes
facebook_page_crawler $APP_ID $APP_SECRET 'appledaily.tw,ETtoday' '2016-09-01 00:00:00' '2016-09-01 23:59:59'

About token

This crawler use app_id, app_secret to get the token.

Please create an app at https://developers.facebook.com/ and use the app_id and app_secret at this crawler.

TODO

1. Add tests
2. Maybe publish to PyPI
3. Counts of reactions and likes