Facebook to RSS API [WIP]

A small API for accessing Facebook profile, pages, groups posts and notifications as RSS feeds. Based on FastAPI and Playwright.

Important

The tool is no longer under-development. Facebook doesn't like it, check more info here #21

Disclaimer

1- This tool is provided with no warranty of any kind. I am not responsible for anything that might happen to your Facebook account that will be automated by this tool.

2- This tool is still experimental. It has not been tested heavily and still has some features that are not implemented yet. I built it for personal use but decided to release it as a public open source project. If you have any questions or suggestions feel free to open an issue. Contributions are welcome too!

Installation

The tool requires Python 3.7 with pip v19+ installed or poetry if you use it.

Clone the repository and run any of the following commands:

Using poetry

poetry install

Using Pip

pip install .

Finally, install Playwright required files

playwright install chromium

Docker

You can use Docker to deploy the API quickly.

Build docker image

docker build -t facebook2rss .

Run the container

 docker run -p 8000:8000 -e EMAIL=email -e PASSWORD=password -d facebook2rss

email and password are facebook credentials. You can use any environmental variables defined in config_example.env as:

 docker run -p 8000:8000 -e EMAIL=email -e PASSWORD=password -e API_KEY="123" -e USE_KEY=True -d facebook2rss

Docker compose

• First, copy config_example.env and fill it with your desired configuration.
• If you haven't logged in using your Facebook account yet, you may uncomment login step in start.sh file before deployment.
• Now, run the following command:

docker-compose up -d

• The API should be running now, checkout using the command docker-compose logs -f.

Notes:

• By default, the API runs on port 8000 using docker-compose. This can be changed by editing start.sh and docker-compose.yml.
• To stop the API, run the following command docker-compose stop.
• To start it again: docker-compose start.
• To delete the built docker image docker-compose down.
• To update to the latest version, update the cloned git repo then run docker-compose up -d.

Usage

• First, If you want to access profiles and private groups feeds, login to Facebook using the following command that will save your session in order to be used later:

python3 -m facebook_rss --login -u email -p password

• Next, run the following command to start serving the API:

uvicorn facebook_rss.main:api

• You can pass any uvicorn cli options like host and port. Also, you can use your own configuration dot env ( copy config_example.env and change the available options) file by passing it to uvicorn using --env-file

uvicorn facebook_rss.main:api --env-file config_example.env

Getting Facebook Feeds as RSS

• All you need to do is to access the respective Facebook feed API route as detailed in the available API documentation thanks to FastAPI.

• For example if the API is running on localhost and port 8080 you can access the documentation in http://127.0.0.1:8080/docs.

• In a nutshell, here are the available routes:

Features

• Access Facebook pages and public groups feed without using an account.
• Access Facebook profiles, pages, groups and notifications when running the API with a Facebook account.
• Your login is automatically saved and refresh on each API request to keep you signed in.
• Facebook posts can be fetched as HTML (default) or text.
• Append Facebook comments of any post RSS feed. (Disabled by default)
• Easily configure the API as you want either using custom config.env file or by overriding a certain option using uvicorn.
• RSS feeds are cached by default (for 30 minutes) to not abuse Facebook and trigger any anti-automation mechanisms. This can be configured as you want and also can be ignored by using no_cache=1 parameter with any of the API routes.
• Supports using HTTP or SOCKS5 proxies.
• Secure access to the API using your own api_key that can be configured via env file. (Disabled by default)

Limitations

• Apparently Facebook restricts access to public profiles on mbasic website after several visits.

Current status

• Data is being scraped from mbasic Facebook website that doesn't use Javascript and cached for 30 minutes.