DFI - PC Software Discussion Thread

OneGrimPilgrim

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hello everyone!

lets discuss about PC softwares here - QnA, troubleshooting, buying advice, tips 'n tricks, some cross-use questions/advices between PC & mobile......& all such!

i surmise that this thread will remain one of my haunts here for quite some time to come, as i got a lot of questions to badger ppl like @mendosa @Project @Ancient Indian dharma etc with! :p

so, onward to my first question.............

@Krusty @Razor @tarunraju @roma @Hemu Vikram Aditya @Bhoot Pishach @An Angry Potato @Bhumihar @Dovah @Johny_Baba and all!

(@Project Dharma - finally opening the thread after much deliberation)
 

OneGrimPilgrim

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1. HOW TO GATHER STATUS-UPDATES OF ANY OF YOUR FRIEND ON FACEBOOK, FROM SOME PAST TIME-PERIOD?

as those on FB might know, you can no more see any of your friend's status updates as per timeline. you'll have to keep scrolling down & down, which'll obviously be VERY tedious. i want to collect the status updates of a friend of mine (or let him do it himself) from past year, EVEN LINKS OF THEM WOULD DO (having links would be much better, coz then i would also be able to see the comments), and export them to anywhere - google doc/spreadsheet, one drive, google drive, pdf, anything........

any suggestions pls, on how to do it, either by the profile-owner himself or a friend?

@mendosa - the method of using IFTTT & wordpress, can it be used retrospectively?
 

Ancient Indian

p = np :)
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1. HOW TO GATHER STATUS-UPDATES OF ANY OF YOUR FRIEND ON FACEBOOK, FROM SOME PAST TIME-PERIOD?

as those on FB might know, you can no more see any of your friend's status updates as per timeline. you'll have to keep scrolling down & down, which'll obviously be VERY tedious. i want to collect the status updates of a friend of mine (or let him do it himself) from past year, EVEN LINKS OF THEM WOULD DO (having links would be much better, coz then i would also be able to see the comments), and export them to anywhere - google doc/spreadsheet, one drive, google drive, pdf, anything........

any suggestions pls, on how to do it, either by the profile-owner himself or a friend?

@mendosa - the method of using IFTTT & wordpress, can it be used retrospectively?
If it is not possible to get all status updates through the website, you need to use its API.
Try some python scrappers.

Since I am a small time programmer, I might be missing something. Lets wait for other guys' solutions. They may refer you some better methods.:eric:
 

Project Dharma

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IFTT is typically exactly what the name says - "if this happens then do that". So most actions are not retro.. Also I doubt that it can import private posts. However, I haven't used it, will let @mendosa reply.

For the Facebook archive, @ancientIndian 's suggestion should work, there is an API for retrieving posts

https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference/v2.9/user/feed

Let me see if I can build that script for you if you still need it this evening.
 

mendosa

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@mendosa - the method of using IFTTT & wordpress, can it be used retrospectively?
IFTTT is just a platform, the apps are to be created by the user himself. Sure, some people share their apps so we can use them for our needs but IFTTT is still a platform to make custom javascript apps.

For your needs, you can do a script and tell it to "scroll till past date and then download all posts made after that". But that would be like reinventing the wheel. There are apps which are used by brand managers and HR recruiters to screen candidate's past social media activity. You can use one of those. I don't remember any of their names, but there are several such apps.

There's a PHP way to do it : https://github.com/sohaibilyas/facebook-php-sdk-v5/blob/master/get-all-posts-on-user-timeline.php

But you will need your own server for that, and install a PHP framework like Zend or WP to install this applet on top of.
 

OneGrimPilgrim

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IFTT is typically exactly what the name says - "if this happens then do that". So most actions are not retro.. Also I doubt that it can import private posts. However, I haven't used it, will let @mendosa reply.

For the Facebook archive, @ancientIndian 's suggestion should work, there is an API for retrieving posts

https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference/v2.9/user/feed

Let me see if I can build that script for you if you still need it this evening.
thanks a lot. no such hurry :)

IFTTT is just a platform, the apps are to be created by the user himself. Sure, some people share their apps so we can use them for our needs but IFTTT is still a platform to make custom javascript apps.

For your needs, you can do a script and tell it to "scroll till past date and then download all posts made after that". But that would be like reinventing the wheel. There are apps which are used by brand managers and HR recruiters to screen candidate's past social media activity. You can use one of those. I don't remember any of their names, but there are several such apps.

There's a PHP way to do it : https://github.com/sohaibilyas/facebook-php-sdk-v5/blob/master/get-all-posts-on-user-timeline.php

But you will need your own server for that, and install a PHP framework like Zend or WP to install this applet on top of.
thanks again.

@Ancient Indian & others - using some proper keywords in google, i found several things that could help:


and another good thing, that quite a few of these claim to extract comments too! will test those first that dont require any CLI or usage of any language etc.

@Ancient Indian - were you talking about something like this? found a nice tutorial:

http://minimaxir.com/2015/07/facebook-scraper/
 
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mendosa

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@OneGrimPilgrim seems to be obsessed with scrappers this week.

It's a costly affair one way or other. It's not just scrapping, then you need to store it somewhere, then format it or visualize it. Even if the scripts are for free, the servers will cost you. It cannot be done on a shared hosting server, it will need at least a VPS.

Obviously you are looking to mine more than just one profile, so it will have to be stored somewhere, so you will need to use a database.

If it's just 1 profile, or less than 10 profiles, you can simply save the page DOM (Right click > Save page). Manually scroll to whichever time stamp you want and just save the page as HTML.

Here's a small script I wrote to automate the scrolling process. To use it on any page, do a right click > inspect > console > paste and run.
Code:
setInterval(function()
{

window.scrollTo(0,document.body.scrollHeight);

}, 4000);
This will scroll to the bottom of the page, wait for 4 seconds for new content to be fetched from the FB server, then scroll again, wait for new content and scroll again repeatedly. You can stop it at a timeframe you want or it will keep scrolling down till it reaches the last post made by that Facebook user. Once it has scrolled to the bottom, you can simply save the page from right click.
 

OneGrimPilgrim

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@OneGrimPilgrim seems to be obsessed with scrappers this week.

It's a costly affair one way or other. It's not just scrapping, then you need to store it somewhere, then format it or visualize it. Even if the scripts are for free, the servers will cost you. It cannot be done on a shared hosting server, it will need at least a VPS.

Obviously you are looking to mine more than just one profile, so it will have to be stored somewhere, so you will need to use a database.

If it's just 1 profile, or less than 10 profiles, you can simply save the page DOM (Right click > Save page). Manually scroll to whichever time stamp you want and just save the page as HTML.

Here's a small script I wrote to automate the scrolling process. To use it on any page, do a right click > inspect > console > paste and run.
Code:
setInterval(function()
{

window.scrollTo(0,document.body.scrollHeight);

}, 4000);
This will scroll to the bottom of the page, wait for 4 seconds for new content to be fetched from the FB server, then scroll again, wait for new content and scroll again repeatedly. You can stop it at a timeframe you want or it will keep scrolling down till it reaches the last post made by that Facebook user. Once it has scrolled to the bottom, you can simply save the page from right click.
thanks. i need to do this only occasionally (i think). for select profiles. variable time-frames. the first use will be, getting the posts & the comments underneath them, of a friend, from his past year's timeline (first 6 months or so). a couple of ready-to-use tools i found export them into a CSV file (BINO):

Bino Posts scraper & publisher is a software that facilitates the scraping, filtering and publishing of Facebook posts, Running on complete autopilot.
it's make easy to:
- Automatically collect posts from a list of source pages.
- Filter posts by various metrics, including post type and content.
- Automatically modify posts by adding or removing text and media.
- Publish posts to your own pages with a variety of options.
- export the collected posts as csv file.
- Download Videos,Photos by one or in bulk.
 

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