source code

# current code that I am running. contains a lot of try, except, error handling due to a lot of inconsistent json data
# i'm sure there's far more efficient ways to do this so any suggestions are welcome!
# things i'm working on: 
# saving output to csv
# best way to plot number of posts, likes and comments against time

from facepy import GraphAPI
import json

# paste in an access token from the facebook developers graph API (need to sign up with your fb account logged in)
graph = GraphAPI("")

# paste the group id from url of a group you are an admin of
group_id = ""

#change limit, since and until to edit the number of posts to retreive or from what time period
data = graph.get(group_id+'/feed',page=False,limit=100,since="yyyy-mm-dd",until="yyyy-mm-dd")

jsonposts = json.dumps(data)

output = json.loads(jsonposts)

info = output[u'data']

masterlist = []

# this is currently grabbing the date of post, who posted it, title of link posted, link url, number of likes and comments
# and appending a list of the data for each post to a master list. if some of that data is not present, it will append an error
# integer or string instead

def scrape_data(a):
    for i in a:
        minorlist = []
        minorlist.append(i[u'created_time'])
        minorlist.append(i[u'from'][u'name'])
        try:
            minorlist.append(i[u'name'])
        except:
            minorlist.append("No Link")
        try:
            minorlist.append(i[u'link'])
        except:
            minorlist.append("No URL")
        try:
            minorlist.append(len(i[u'likes'][u'data']))
        except KeyError:
            minorlist.append(0)
        try:
            minorlist.append(len(i[u'comments'][u'data']))
        except KeyError:
            minorlist.append("No Comments :(")
        masterlist.append(minorlist)
        
scrape_data(info)

# prints all collected data for each post on one line with comma seperators then data for next post on new line and so on
for item in masterlist:
    try:
        print ", ".join(map(str, item[0:]))
    except UnicodeEncodeError:
        pass