Facebook's API is really difficult to setup and have rate limiting as well. Why not getting public data with some automation?. Here's a python library that does the job.
Install it with pypi:
pip install facebook-page-scraper
Or
Install it from source:
Download it using git:
git clone https://github.com/shaikhsajid1111/facebook_page_scraper.git
and open terminal inside folder and enter command:
python3 setup.py install
.
How to use it?
Well its simple!,
Just import class from the package,instantiate and start scraping.
Suppose I want posts from Facebook AI,
from facebook_page_scraper import Facebook_scraper
#instantiate the Facebook_scraper class
page_name = "facebookai"
posts_count = 10
browser = "firefox"
facebook_ai = Facebook_scraper(page_name,posts_count,browser)
Above was instantiation part, Suppose you want data in JSON format than just call the
scrap_to_json()
method.
Like:
json_data = facebook_ai.scrap_to_json()
print(json_data)
And you will get the JSON Output:
{
"1730063790503900": {
"name": "Facebook AI",
"shares": 65,
"reactions": {
"likes": 305,
"loves": 31,
"wow": 7,
"cares": 0,
"sad": 0,
"angry": 0,
"haha": 0
},
"reaction_count": 343,
"comments": 11,
"content": "We\u2019re training computer vision models that leverage Transformers, a deep neural network architecture. Data-efficient image Transformers (DeiT) use less data and computing resources to produce high-performance image classification AI models. We hope to advance the field of computer vision by sharing this work with the broader community, making large-scale systems that train AI models more accessible to researchers and engineers.",
"posted_on": "2020-12-24T04:05:27",
"video": "",
"image": [
"https://scontent-bom1-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.2365-6/p540x282/131570013_988138305044034_3894567585410559092_n.png?_nc_cat=109&ccb=2&_nc_sid=eaa83b&_nc_ohc=mAeDelparrEAX-3Mk7E&_nc_ht=scontent-bom1-2.xx&_nc_tp=30&oh=3fedb0e3cea6ad6f934ca20f77bec624&oe=600CB4C9"
],
"post_url": "https://www.facebook.com/facebookai/posts/1730063790503900"
}, ...
}
if you want to save the data to CSV file directly, Just call the
scrap_to_csv()
method.
Like:
filename = "data_file" #file name without CSV extension,where data will be saved
directory = "E:\data" #directory where CSV file will be saved
facebook_ai.scrap_to_csv(filename,directory)
Output:
Top comments (1)
hello i have a question for exemple i want to define a period of date that i want to scrape how can i do it? for example i want to scrap since 2023/1/1 until 2023/4/12