Talkspace-scraper NPM

Talkspace Scraper

A commandline application that pulls your entire message history from Talkspace

How to use

Install

npm install talkspace-scraper

(optional) Setup MongoDB

This step isn't strictly neccesary. The tool will output to a file if you do not specify a MongoDB connection.

If you do wish to intgrate, you have a few options. I personally am using the free tier of the online managed MongoDB servcie. However, as a proof of concept, you can simply follow the instructions here to get it running locally. On my Mac,

  $> brew tap mongodb/brew
  $> brew install mongodb-community@4.4
  $> brew services start mongodb-community

was sufficient to get a local instance going. The connection string for this local instance is just mongodb://localhost. You can validate that the Talkspace data was saved to your chosen MongoDB instance using a gui like this one

(optional) Setup `.env`

You have the choice of either defining your username, password, and connection_string as arguments in the commandline or as key value pairs in a local .env file. If you want to use the .env approach, you'll need to set USERNAME=... and PASSWORD=.... If you wish to use MongoDB, also set MONGO_CONNECTION_STRING=.... Make sure your .env is in your current working directory when you call the application.

Here is an example .env file.

USERNAME=user
PASSWORD=pass
MONGO_CONNECTION_STRING=mongodb://localhost

Use the tool

Make sure you're using the correct version of node specified in package.json. If you are using MongoDB, the collection talkspace does not need to exist a priori for the scripts to work.

using `.env`

Make sure you've followed the steps above to set up your .env, and then call talkspace-scrape. If you have not defined a MongoDB connection, feel free to use the -f flag to designate a specific file you want your data outputted to (e.g. scrape-talksapce -f output.json).

using command-line arguments

$> talkspace-scrape -h

Usage: talkspace-scrape [options]

Scrape your message history from Talkspace

Options:
  -o, --overwrite                               overwrite the existing records in MongoDB instance
  -u, --username <string>                       your Talkspace username / email
  -p, --password <string>                       Your Talkspace passowrd
  -c, --connection-string <MongoDB connection>  Mongo db connection string. If specified, will ignore --output-file
  -f, --output-file <file>                      output file to save JSON locally
  -h, --help                                    display help for command