Facebook is the leading social network, there is no doubt. It has more than 1 billion registered user. There is hardly any one who had not heard (or using) it.
This tutorial is an example on how to backup/download 'facebook profile' (our own profile). Frustated at not finding a single tutorial on how to backup my user profile. i went ahead and created this tutorial. back to the point, we will use 'cURL' (and 'wget') for this purpose as it is available for almost all system.
Facebook data are available from 'https://graph.facebook.com'. Basic info like
Required:
* cURL or wget
* User ID (UID)
* facebook access_token
* Basic idea on FQL and FQL tables (optional)
id, username, name, link, gender & locale are available publicily. Throw in an access token you have all data that is in public or visible to friends. Example below:
https://graph.facebook.com/jor.teron
Required:
* cURL or wget
* User ID (UID)
* facebook access_token
* Basic idea on FQL and FQL tables (optional)
This method work by invoking graph explorer...
where
..then url will be like.
https://graph.facebook.com/fql?q=FQL_QUERY&access_token=ACCESS_TOKEN
FQL_QUERY is the FQL query implemented by facebook. If FQL_QUERY is..
select description from group where gid=XXXXXXXX
https://graph.facebook.com/fql?q=select+description+from+group+where+gid=XXXXXXXX&access_token=ACCESS_TOKEN
STEP TO FOLLOW:
1) Goto Graph API Explorer, https://developers.facebook.com/tools/explorer. Login if necessary. Click '
1) Goto Graph API Explorer, https://developers.facebook.com/tools/explorer. Login if necessary. Click '
Get Access Token' button. Select appropriate permission. save it. Copy the access token (those jumbled alphabet).
2) Note down your UID.
3) Open 'Command Prompt' and type in the following.
for cURL:
curl --user-agent 'Firefox 10' \
--output file.txt \
"https://graph.facebook.com/fql?q=select+uid,username,name+from+user+where+uid=UID&access_token=ACCESS_TOKEN"
for wget:
wget --user-agent='Firefox 10' \
--output-document=file.txt \
"https://graph.facebook.com/fql?q=select+uid,username,name+from+user+where+uid=UID&access_token=ACCESS_TOKEN"
note:
* Replace
*
* Replace
UID and ACCESS_TOKEN with its respective values you got in step 2 and 1 respectively.*
ACCESS_TOKEN is valid only for 1 hour, so you will need to get it (again) later if needed.
In the above example it'll download User Profile (containing
id, username, name) and save it to 'file.txt'. You can specify more column if needed.
To download photos:
curl --user-agent 'Firefox 10' \
--output photo.txt \
"https://graph.facebook.com/fql?q=select+src_big+from+photo+where+owner=UID&access_token=ACCESS_TOKEN"
Sort out photos links using
grep, sed, awk or regex to download them. In these way one can download facebook data from profile to photos, comments to likes, pokes to messages etc.
If FQL intimate you, there is an easier way to fetch data by using Graph Search....
Example:
https://graph.facebook.com/USER?fields=GRAPH_OBJECT&access_token=ACCESS_TOKEN
https://graph.facebook.com/jor.teron?fields=id,username,name&access_token=ACCESS_TOKEN
This tutorial will benefit those who want to backup their facebook data. Alternatively if you find this process hard to follow you can use facebook own feature 'Copy Facebook'.
Download curl:
http://curl.haxx.se/download.html
http://curl.haxx.se/download.html
FQL reference docs:
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/fql/
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/fql/
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