askfm archiving scripts

This repository contains python scripts that can be used to back askfm user profiles and generate html files from the archived data. All data is saved to a local sqlite3 database named askfm.db.

askfm-archiving-scripts vs askfmArchiver

This tool utilizes the undocumented ASKfm API that is used in the mobile app, which means this tool can extract information that are only available on the mobile app such as chats/threads.

Unlike the web scraping tool, you will need to provide valid askfm credentials to be able to use it. The credentials are only sent to ask.fm as part of the request to their API.

Setup

Note: the scripts/tools in this repository have been tested on Linux only, but they will probably work fine on other operating systems.

Linux Setup

1. Install Python3.11
2. Clone the repository or download the latest release
3. Execute setup.sh

./setup.sh

This will initialize the virtual environment and will install the required dependencies.

Windows Setup

1. Download Python3.11
   • You can find the installer at the bottom of the page
   • Make sure to select Add python to PATH
2. Download the Source code (zip) of the latest release
3. Unzip the downloaded file
4. Open Powershell and cd into the directory and execute setup.ps1

Example

# change directory to the tool's folder
cd C:\askfm-archiving-scripts-1.0.0

# execute setup script
.\setup.ps1

If you get an error about the execution policy, you can change the policy by opening Powershell as administrator and executing the following

Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

Usage: Archiving

1. Open config.py and fill in the username, password, and the api key which you can get from here
2. Execute the python script extractor.py

Linux

./askfm-archiver.sh usernames [usernames ...]

Windows

.\askfm-archiver.ps1 usernames [usernames ...]

Example

The following example archives the content of the profiles test1 test2

./askfm-archiver.sh test1 test2

.\askfm-archiver.ps1 test1 test2

Usage: HTML

You can generate html files of an archived user using the following command:

Linux

./askfm-html.sh usernames [usernames ...]

Windows

.\askfm-html.ps1 usernames [usernames ...]

Related work / See also

• The library utilized by the archiving tool: https://github.com/AskfmForHumans/askfm-api