How do I scrape data from a web page? Facebook wants you to stay on its platform forever. They disallow sending a message to all your friends, so you need to get crafty to escape.

How Do I Do It?

If you’re using Google Chrome, it’s straightforward. There are many ways to scrape a web page, but I’m explaining a quick and dirty solution. If you want to escape Facebook, welcome to the club! Try the same method on any web page where you need obfuscated data on a web page.

  1. Navigate to: https://www.facebook.com/friends/list
  2. Alternatively, open Facebook and click the Friends tab.
  3. Scroll slowly until every friend is listed on the page.
  4. Open the vertical … menu at the top right of Google Chrome.
    1. Alternatively, press Cmd-Option-i on macOS, and skip the next two steps.
  5. Choose More Tools
  6. Choose Developer Tools

Once this is complete, you should have a developer console open.

Paste this code into your console.

const result = $x(
  "/html/body/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div[*]/a/@href"
);
result.map((x) => {
  console.log(x);
});

This should log all of your Facebook friend profile page URLs. Now you can save the log and use the data to populate a CSV file and import it into LoopMessage or another tool that automates sending messages.

  1. Right-click the result line and click Save as…!
How Do I Scrape Data From A Web Page Console

You’ve scraped a web page, and now you can make your Facebook exit!

I wish you luck escaping the clutches of Failbook; you’ll need it!

By the way, Fuck Facebook.

References