Facebook-scraper is a Python library designed primarily for scraping data from public Facebook pages, such as comments, post content, videos, and images. It offers a straightforward API interface. However, it operates under strict limitations—users must comply with the platform’s rules and use third-party tools legally to avoid issues like account bans resulting from large-scale scraping.
What are the advantages of using Facebook-scraper? (Key Features)
Powerful Data Scraping Capabilities:
Supports scraping various types of data including comments, likes, text content, and images from posts.
Login Support:
Allows providing a username and password for logging in to access public data.
No API Key Required:
Enables scraping of public content without requiring login or official API access.
Cross-Platform Compatibility:
Compatible with multiple versions of Python and offers a Command Line Interface (CLI).
Below is an example of scraping a public homepage using Python:
Python
pip install facebook-scraper```
from facebook_scraper import get_posts
# The ID or username of the target Page
target_page = 'nasa'
# The number of posts we want to crawl
num_posts_to_scrape = 5
print(f"? Scraping the latest {num_posts_to_scrape} post for '{target_page}'...")
try:
# get_posts is a generator that efficiently returns post data item by item
# pages=1 The parameters allow rough control of the depth of the grab，extra_info=True More detailed data will be obtained
post_iterator = get_posts(target_page, pages=1, extra_info=True)
scraped_posts = []
for post in post_iterator:
scraped_posts.append(post)
if len(scraped_posts) >= num_posts_to_scrape:
break # Stop when the target quantity is reached
# Print the key information of one of the posts
if scraped_posts:
print("\n--- Sample data for the most recent post ---")
latest_post = scraped_posts[0]
print(f" - post ID: {latest_post.get('post_id')}")
print(f" - Release time: {latest_post.get('time')}")
print(f" - Post text (first 50 characters): {latest_post.get('text', '')[:50]}...")
print(f" - Likes: {latest_post.get('likes')}")
print(f" - Number of comments: {latest_post.get('comments')}")
print(f" - Image URL: {latest_post.get('image')}")
print(f" - Post link: {latest_post.get('post_url')}")
print(f"\n✅ Capture complete! A total of {len(scraped_posts)} posts were obtained.")
except Exception as e:
print(f"❌ An error occurred during scraping: {e}")