Scraping a full Facebook group page from a browser

README

These are a few commands that could be used to scrape a full group page
from Facebook. One can use the Graph API, but there some users would be
hidden. The JS commands should be run in a browser and scroll through
the page opening up hidden content and comments. I used Chrome. Once
enough content is opened, you should save the page as any other and
analyse it's contents. 

commands.js

// 1. load the group

// 2. start scrolling. This will erase all images to minimize the size
// of the page in memory and keep scrolling down

scroll = setInterval(function() {
  a = $$("img"); for (i=0;i<a.length;i++) a[i].parentNode.removeChild(a[i]);
  window.scrollTo(0,document.body.scrollHeight);
},3000);

// 3. Stop scrolling when satisfied
clearInterval(scroll);

// 4. Add a guard against reloading the page
window.onbeforeunload = function() {
  clearInterval(uncover);
  return "Loading hidden comments stopped.";
}

// 5. Load hidden comments and posts. Loading some posts may reload the
// page. In these cases the guard above will stop the loading process and
// stop the reload. In that case, press cancel and run this command again
uncover = setInterval(function() {
  a = $$("img"); for (i=0;i<a.length;i++) a[i].parentNode.removeChild(a[i]);
  a = $$("a[class='see_more_link']");
  if (a.length>0) {
    a[0].target="_blank";
    a[0].click();
    a[0].className="see_more_link passed";
  }
  b = $$("a[class='UFIPagerLink']");
  if (b.length>0) {
    b[0].click();
    b[0].className="UFIPagerLink passed";
  }
  console.log(a.length+" "+b.length);
},1000);

// 6. When all is loaded, stop the comment/post recover process
clearInterval(uncover);

// 7. Save the page code from the browser

Hello,

I use my own Facebook group scrape tool (written in Java) which runs each Z minutes and scrape last N post in the specified group.

For my needs, the posts are storing in the Firebase

I am going to publish this tool for the world - just need to prepare some executable files

The program will be available here - http://bit.ly/3bbtJA0

Meanwhile, you may request an output format you need to be added in the tool and/or some extra logic

Here are my contacts

email - postullat2@gmail.com

telegram - https://t.me/postullat

Skype - postullat2@gmail.com

Feel free to contact me

Best regards,
Vova

$$ wasn't working for me whilst inside setInterval (but worked fine when run manually) due to scoping; binding it to querySelectorAll on the document manually before trying to run setInterval fixed it.

const $$ = document.querySelectorAll.bind(document);