facebook-chat-downloader is an unofficial facebook chat messages downloader command line utility.
It's designed to simplify the retrieval of the chat messages of a list of users.
It uses facebook-chat-api library to retrieve the data from facebook.
facebook-chat-downloader can login from an email and password from command line options, user prompt,
or from a state-file (generated if requested after the first successful login),
allowing to connect multiple times without requesting multiple times the email/password.
The file storage is done per chat name, usually the username, where the filename is the chat name with the symbols removed, supporting the following file formats:
- raw
json- the data is stored as it's retrieved from thefacebook-chat-api. - formatted
json- the output is processed, according to the supplied field names. -
txt- a text file with one message per line.
[sudo] npm install -g facebook-chat-downloader
facebook-chat-downloader [options]
Where the options are:
| Short Name | Long Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| -e | email if email and input state file aren't present, it will request by user prompt |
|
| -p | --password | password if password and input state file aren't present, it will request by user prompt |
| -s | --state-file | state filename if -S isn't present, it will read state from this filereplacing the need of an email and password |
| -S | --write-state-file | if present, it will write the state to this file after successful login |
| -t | --threads-file | chat threads filename if -T isn't present, it will read threads from this filereplacing the need of an extra request |
| -T | --write-threads-file | if present, it will write the threads file |
| -l | --limit | maximum number of chat threads use this value, only if the chats to download are recent |
| -g | --tag | list of chat types by tags Possible values are INBOX,ARCHIVED,PENDING,OTHER
|
| -n | --chat-name | list of chat names to download |
| -R | --raw | if present and output is in raw json, otherwise is in formatted json
|
| -O | --output-folder | output folder location where all the chat files will be stored |
| -N | --output-field-name | list of fields names for non-raw storage Possible values are: date, sender, message
|
| -F | --output-file-format | output file format. Either txt or json
|
| -D | --output-date-format | output date-time format. see moment.js |
| -c | --convert | converts from raw chat file into another format If it's present, it will bypass login, and it will read from previously stored raw json files |
facebook-chat-downloader -n 'My lunch group' -n 'Miss 王' -R
It will prompt for the email and password associated with your facebook account,
and store the chats in the files: my-lunch-group.raw.json and miss-王.raw.json.
facebook-chat-downloader -e myfbemail@northpole.com -s state.json -S -O chats
It will prompt for the password, store the state in state.json after successful login,
and store all the chats in the folder chats in json format.
facebook-chat-downloader -s state.json -t threads.json -T -n 'Hiking (weekend)' -F txt
It will read the login from state.json, write the thead list in threads.json,
download one chat and store it in text format on the file hiking-weekend.txt.
facebook-chat-downloader -t threads.json -c -n 'My lunch group' -F txt -N date -N message -N sender
It will read the previously stored my-lunch-group.raw.json and convert it into text format,
with the message before the sender.
To prevent connection timeouts, facebook-chat-downloader downloads a 50 messages package, and then it uses a recursive function to retrieve the next one package. If a certain chat has too many messages, it could reach a stack overflow.
MIT
(c) 2018-2024 Alexandre Bento Freire
