Facebook Chat Archive Parser

A small tool and library for parsing chat history from a Facebook data archive into more usable formats.

What is a "Facebook Chat Archive"?

Facebook Messenger records all your conversation history since the beginning of time. If you want it back for some reason, you have two options:

1. Create a scraper that constantly "scrolls up" in the conversation window you're interested in (or simulates that with API calls), progressively getting more and more of your chat history.
2. Ask Facebook for an archive of all your data here , and wait a couple of days for them to give it to you as a zip archive.

Number 2 is the only practical option if you want everything in a timely manner.

What does Facebook give me in this zip archive?

Facebook gives you literally everything you've ever posted to Facebook, which includes your pictures, videos, posts. etc in addition to your chat messages.

Your chat history comes in a single HTML page titled messages.htm. Unfortunately, the data is mostly unordered and impossible to load into your web browser (it can be several hundred megabytes in size). You're essentially forced to parse it if you want to analyze the content.

UPDATE: As of October 2017, messages.htm just acts as a manifest for the contents of a directory called messages/. The formatting is almost identical to before; just with each thread in its own file now. Both are required to use this tool.

Why would I ever want my Facebook chat history?

There are a number of reasons you may want to parse your Facebook chat history:

1. To make a simulation of your friends using Markov chains.
2. You're deleting your Facebook account, but would like a record of your conversations.
3. You need to analyze a copy of your conversations for legal reasons.

Here comes the Facebook Chat Archive Parser!

The Facebook Chat Archive Parser is a command line tool (and library for advanced users) for easily transforming your messages.htm file into something actually useful.

How do I get it?

Install the Facebook Chat Archive Parser via pip under at least Python 2.7:

pip install fbchat-archive-parser

If you already have an older version installed, you can upgrade to the latest with the following command:

pip install --upgrade fbchat-archive-parser

How does it work?

Simply run the command fbcap in your terminal with your messages.htm file as the argument.

fbcap ./messages.htm

And watch as the parser sifts through your data!

When it's done, it will dump all your conversation history is dumped to stdout. Obviously, this can be very long, so here is an example:

What if I want JSON?

Simply supply the -f json option to the command line:

fbcap ./messages.htm -f json

The output format is as follows:

Messages are ordered from oldest to newest.

{
    "threads": [
        {
            "participants": ["participant_0", "...", "participant_n"],
            "messages": [
                {
                    "date": "ISO 8601 formatted date",
                    "sender": "sender name",
                    "message": "message text"
                },
                "..."
            ]
        },
        "..."
    ]
}

How about CSV?

Of course!

fbcap ./messages.htm -f csv

thread,sender,date,message
Third User,Third User,2013-10-04T15:05Z,1
Third User,Third User,2013-10-04T15:05Z,2
Third User,Third User,2013-10-04T15:05Z,3
Third User,First User,2013-10-04T15:05Z,4
Third User,Third User,2013-10-04T15:06Z,5
Third User,First User,2013-10-04T15:07Z,6
Third User,First User,2013-10-04T15:07Z,7
Second User,Second User,2013-10-04T15:04Z,X Y Z
Second User,Second User,2013-10-04T15:05Z,X? Y Z!
Second User,Second User,2013-10-04T15:05Z,This is a test
Second User,Second User,2013-10-04T15:05Z,"Yes, it is"
Second User,Second User,2013-10-04T15:05Z,The last message!
"Second User, Third User",Third User,2013-10-04T15:05Z,1
"Second User, Third User",Third User,2013-10-04T15:05Z,2
...

What about that YAML thing the kids these days are talking about?

For sure!

fbcap ./messages.htm -f yaml

user: First User
threads:
- participants:
  - Second User
  - Third User
  messages:
  - date: 2013-10-04T22:05-07:00
    message: '1'
    sender: Third User
  - date: 2013-10-04T22:05-07:00
    message: '2'
    sender: Third User
  - date: 2013-10-04T22:05-07:00
    message: '3'
    sender: Third User
...

What if I want to see some statistics?

See who you talk to the most among your friends and how much each of you contribute to the conversation.

fbcap ./messages.htm -f stats

How do I get any of the above into a file?

Just use standard file redirects.

fbcap ./messages.htm > my_file.txt

Can I get each conversation into a separate file?

Use the -d directive to send the output to a directory instead.

fbcap ./messages.htm -d some/random/directory

This will create a file per conversation titled thread_#.ext where # is the conversation number and ext is the extension of the format (e.g. json). A manifest.txt file is also created, which lists the participants in each thread number for navigational/search purposes.

What if I only want to parse out a specific conversation?

You can use the -t option to specify a particular conversation/thread you want to output. Just provide a comma-separated set of names. If you don't remember a last name (or conversely, only remember the last name), the system will try to compensate.

fbcap ./messages.htm -t second

fbcap ./messages.htm -t second,third

What happens to my messages that are pictures?

As of January 2018, Facebook seems to be including referenced images in download archives. Image messages will be converted to text references in the following format: (image reference: messages/photos/<picture id>.jpg)

What else can I do?

Take a look at the help options to find out more!

$ fbcap --help
Usage: fbcap [OPTIONS] PATH

  A program for converting Facebook chat history (messages.htm) to a number
  of more usable formats.

Options:
  -f, --format [csv|json|pretty-json|text|yaml|stats]
                                  Format to convert to.
  -t, --thread TEXT               Only include threads involving exactly the
                                  following comma-separated participants in
                                  output (-t 'Billy,Steve Smith')
  -z, --timezones TEXT            Timezone disambiguators
                                  (TZ=OFFSET,[TZ=OFFSET[...]])
  -d, --directory PATH            Write all output as a file per thread into a
                                  directory (subdirectory will be created)
  -u, --utc                       Use UTC timestamps in the output
  -n, --nocolor                   Do not colorize output
  -p, --noprogress                Do not show progress output
  -r, --resolve                   [BETA] Resolve profile IDs to names by
                                  connecting to Facebook
  --help                          Show this message and exit.

Troubleshooting

Why do some names appear as <some number>@facebook.com?

For some reason, Facebook seems to randomly swap names for IDs. In recent times, it has gotten worse. You can have the parser resolve the names via Facebook itself with the --resolve flag. Keep in mind, this is a beta feature and may not work perfectly.

$ fbcap ./messages.htm -t second --resolve
Facebook username/email: facebook_username
Facebook password:

This requires your Facebook credentials to get accurate results. This does not relay your credentials through any servers and is a direct connection from your computer to Facebook. Please look at the code if you are feeling paranoid or skeptical :)

Why are some of my chat threads missing?

This is a mysterious issue on Facebook's end. From anecdotal evidence, it seems that what gets returned in your chat archive is generally conversations with people who you have most recently talked to. Fortunately, it always seems to be the complete history for each conversation and nothing gets truncated.

Unfortunately, this cannot be remedied unless Facebook fixes the problem on their end.