This tool allows you to make an archive of your statuses, your favourites and the media in both your statuses and your favourites. From this archive, you can generate a simple text file, or a HTML file with or without media. Take a look at an example if you're curious.
Note that Mastodon v2.3.0 added an account archive download feature: "Every 7 days you are able to request a full archive of your toots. The toots are exported in ActivityPub JSON format alongside the media files attached to them, your avatar and header images as well as the private key of your account used for signing content." If all you want to do is have a backup of your data, perhaps that is enough and you don't need this tool.
Please report issues on the Software Wiki. You can get the latest sources from the author’s site.
Table of Contents
- Installation
- Making an archive
- Downloading media files
- Generating a text file
- Searching your archive
- Show context for a toot
- Generating a HTML file
- Reporting
- Expiring your toots and favourites
- Troubleshooting
- Followers
- Following
- Example Setup
- Documentation
- Development
- Processing using jq
- Exploring the API
- Alternatives
The following command will install mastodon-archive and all its
dependencies:
# Python 3
$ pip3 install mastodon-archiveIf this is the first tool you installed using pip then perhaps it
installed mastodon-archive in a directory that's not on your PATH.
I had to add the following to my ~/.bashrc file:
export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/.local/binWhen using the app for the first time, you will have to authorize it:
$ mastodon-archive archive kensanata@dice.camp
Registering app
Log in
Visit the following URL and authorize the app:
[the app gives you a huge URL which you need to visit using a browser]
Then paste the access token here:
[this is where you paste the authorization code]
Get user info
Get statuses (this may take a while)
Save 41 statuses
Note that the library we are using says: "Mastodons API rate limits per IP. By default, the limit is 300 requests per 5 minute time slot. This can differ from instance to instance and is subject to change." Thus, if every request gets 20 toots, then we can get at most 6000 toots per five minutes.
If this is taking too long, consider skipping your favourites:
$ mastodon-archive archive --no-favourites kensanata@dice.camp
If you want a better picture of conversations, you can also include mentions. Mentions are notifications of statuses in which you were mentioned as opposed to statuses of yours that were favoured or boosted by others. Note that if you used to dismiss notifications using the "Clear notifications" menu, then no mentions will be found as mentions are simply a particular kind of notification.
$ mastodon-archive archive --with-mentions kensanata@dice.camp
No matter what you did, You will end up with three new files:
dice.camp.client.secret is where the client secret for this instance
is stored. dice.camp.user.kensanata.secret is where the
authorisation token for this user and instance is stored. If these two
files exist, you don't have to log in the next time you run the app.
If your login expired, you need to remove the file containing the
authorisation token and you will be asked to authorize the app again.
dice.camp.user.kensanata.json is the JSON file with your data (but
without your media attachments). If this file exists, only the missing
toots will be downloaded the next time you run the app. If you suspect
a problem and want to make sure that everything is downloaded again,
you need to remove this file.
By default, media you uploaded and media of statuses you added your favourites are not part of your archive. You can download it using a separate command, however.
Assuming you already made an archive of your toots:
$ mastodon-archive media kensanata@dice.camp
44 urls in your archive (half of them are previews)
34 files already exist
Downloading |################################| 10/10
You will end up with a new directory, dice.camp.user.kensanata. It
contains all the media you uploaded, and their corresponding previews.
If you rerun it, it will simply try to get the remaining files. Note, however, that instance administrators can delete media files. Thus, you might be forever missing some files—particularly the ones from remote instances, if you added any to your favourites.
There's one thing you need to remember, though: the media directory contains all the media from your statuses, and all the media from your favourites. There is no particular reason why the media files from both sources need to be in the same directory, see issue #11.
Assuming you already made an archive of your toots:
$ mastodon-archive text kensanata@dice.camp
[lots of other toots]
Alex Schroeder 🐉 @kensanata 2017-11-14T22:21:50.599000+00:00
https://dice.camp/@kensanata/99005111284322450
[#introduction](https://dice.camp/tags/introduction) I run
[#osr](https://dice.camp/tags/osr) games using my own hose rule document but
it all started with Labyrinth Lord which I knew long before I knew B/X. Sadly,
my Indie Game Night is no longer a thing but I still love Lady Blackbird, all
the [#pbta](https://dice.camp/tags/pbta) hacks on my drive, and so much more.
But in the three campaigns I run, it’s all OSR right now.
Generating a text file just means redirection the output to a text file:
$ mastodon-archive text kensanata@dice.camp > statuses.txt
If you're working with text, you might expect the first toot to be at the top and the last toot to be at the bottom. In this case, you need to reverse the list:
$ mastodon-archive text --reverse kensanata@dice.camp | head
You can also filter using regular expressions. These will be checked
against the status content (obviously), display name and
username (both are important for boosted toots), and the created
at date. Also note that the regular expression will be applied to the
raw status content. In other words, the status contains all the HTML
and problably starts with a <p>, which is then removed in the
output.
$ mastodon-archive text kensanata@dice.camp house
You can provide multiple regular expressions and they will all be checked:
$ mastodon-archive text kensanata@dice.camp house rule
Remember basic
regular expression syntax:
\b is a word boundary, (?i) ignores case, (a|b) is for
alternatives, just to pick some useful ones. Use single quotes to
protect your backslashes and questionmarks.
$ mastodon-archive text kensanata@dice.camp house 'rule\b'
You can also search your favourites or your mentions:
$ mastodon-archive text --collection favourites kensanata@dice.camp '(?i)blackbird'
Dates are in ISO format (e.g. 2017-11-19T14:00). I usually only care
about year and month, though:
$ mastodon-archive text --collection favourites kensanata@dice.camp bird '2017-(07|08|09|10|11)'
Sometimes you only remember something about a thread. Let's say you asked a question a while back but now you can't remember the answer you got back then. First, find the question:
$ mastodon-archive text kensanata@dice.camp rules
Alex Schroeder 🐉 @kensanata 2018-05-28T21:19:27.483000+00:00
https://dice.camp/@kensanata/100109016572069901
...
Using the URL, you can now search the archive for some context:
$ mastodon-archive context kensanata@dice.camp https://dice.camp/@kensanata/100109016572069901
This shows the same information clicking on the toot shows you in the web client: all its ancestors and all its descendants. Obviously, if these toots are not in your archive, we can't find them. You'll have to click on the links and hope they're still around.
Assuming you already made an archive of your toots:
$ mastodon-archive html kensanata@dice.camp
This will create numbered HTML files starting with
dice.camp.user.kensanata.statuses.0.html, each page with 2000 toots.
You can change the number of toots per page using an option:
$ mastodon-archive html --toots-per-page 100 kensanata@dice.camp
If you have downloaded your media attachments, these will be used in the HTML files. Thus, if you want to upload the HTML files, you now need to upload the media directory as well or all the media links will be broken.
You can also generate a file for your favourites:
$ mastodon-archive html --collection favourites kensanata@dice.camp
This will create numbered HTML files starting with
dice.camp.user.kensanata.favourites.0.html, each page with 2000
toots.
Note that both the HTML file with your statuses and the HTML file with your favourites will refer to the media files in your media directory.
Some numbers, including your ten most used hashtags:
$ mastodon-archive report kensanata@dice.camp
Considering the last 12 weeks
Statuses: 296
Boosts: 17
Media: 9
Top 10 hashtags:
#caster(8) #20questions(5) #osr(3) #dungeonslayers(2) #introduction(2)
#currentprojects(2) #diaspora(1) #gygax(1) #yoonsuin(1) #casters(1)
Favourites: 248
Boosts: 0
Media: 20
Top 10 hashtags:
#1strpg(9) #rpg(5) #myfirstcharacter(5) #introduction(5) #osr(4)
#1strpgs(4) #dnd(3) #gamesnacks(1) #vancian(1) #mastoart(1)
You can specify a different time number of weeks to consider using
--newer-than N or use --all to consider all your statuses and
favourites.
You can list a different number of hashtags using --top N and you
can list all of them by using --top -1. This might result in a very
long list.
By default only your toots are considered for the hashtags. Use --include-boosts to also include toot you have boosted.
Warning: This is a destructive operation. You will delete your toots on your instance, or unfavour your favourites, or dismiss your notifications on your instance. Where as it might be possible to favour all your favourites again, there is no way to repost all those toots. You will have a copy in your archive, but there is no way to restore these to your instance.
But why? I might want to keep a copy of my toots, but I don't think they have much value going back months and years. I never read through years of tweeting history! This only benefits your enemies, never your friends. So I want to expire my toots. We can always write a blog post about the good stuff. You can read more about this on my blog.
Alternatives: Check out forget, which is a web app that only expires your toots without archiving the. Depending on your needs, that might be enough?
Anyway, back to Mastodon Archive. 🙂
You can expire your toots using the expire command and providing the
--older-than option. This option specifies the number of weeks to
keep on the server. Anything older than that is deleted or unfavoured.
If you use --older-than 0, then all your toots will be deleted, or
all your favourites will be unfavoured, or all your notifications
will be dismissed.
~/src/mastodon-backup $ mastodon-archive expire --older-than 0 kensanata@social.nasqueron.org
This is a dry run and nothing will be expired.
Instead, we'll just list what would have happened.
Use --confirmed to actually do it.
Delete: 2017-11-26 "<p>Testing äöü</p>"
Actually, the default operation just does a dry run. You need to use
the --confirmed option to proceed.
And one more thing: since this requires the permission to write to your account, you will have to reauthorize the app.
$ mastodon-archive expire --collection favourites --older-than 0 \
--confirmed kensanata@social.nasqueron.org
Log in
Visit the following URL and authorize the app:
[long URL shown here]
Then paste the access token here:
[long token pasted here]
Expiring |################################| 1/1
After a while you'll notice that archiving mentions takes more and
more time. The reason is when expiring mentions, the tool goes through
all your notifications and looks at those of the type "mention" and
expires them if they are old enough. There are other types of
notifications, however: "follow", "favourite", and "reblog" (at the
time of this writing). As these are not archived, we also don't expire
them. Thus, the list of notifications to look through when archiving
keeps growing unless you use the "Clear notifications" menu in the
Mastodon web client. Alternatively, you can use the
--delete-other-notifications option together with --collection mentions and then the tool will dismiss all the older other
notifications for you.
🔥 If you are archiving a ton of toots and you run into a General API
problem, use the --pace option. This is what the problem looks like:
$ mastodon-archive archive kensanata@dice.camp
...
Get statuses (this may take a while)
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
mastodon.Mastodon.MastodonAPIError: General API problem.
Solution:
$ mastodon-archive archive --pace kensanata@dice.camp
The problem seems to be related to how Mastodon rate limits requests.
🔥 If you are expiring many toots, same thing. The default rate limit is 300 requests per five minutes, so when more than 300 toots are to be deleted, the app simply has to wait for five minutes before continuing. It takes time.
$ mastodon-archive expire --confirm kensanata@octodon.social
Loading existing archive
Expiring | | 1/1236
We need to authorize the app to make changes to your account.
Log in
Visit the following URL and authorize the app:
[long URL here]
Then paste the access token here:
[access token here]
Considering the default rate limit of 300 requests per five minutes and having 1236 statuses,
this will take at least 20 minutes to complete.
Expiring |####### | 301/1236
🔥 If you are experimenting with expiry, you'll need to give the app write permissions. If you then delete the user secret file, hoping to start with a clean slate when archiving, you'll be asked to authorize the app again, but somehow Mastodon remembers that you have already granted the app read and write permissions, and you will get this error:
mastodon.Mastodon.MastodonAPIError: Granted scopes "read write" differ from requested scopes "read".
In order to get rid of this, you need to visit the website, got to Settings → Authorized apps and revoke your authorization for mastodon-archive. Now you can try the authorization URL again and you will only get read permissions instead of both read and write permissions.
This is work in progress. I'm actually not sure where I want to go with this. Right now it lists all your followers that haven't interacted with you. If a toot of theirs mentions you, then that counts as an interaction. Favouring and boosting does not count. By default, this looks at the last twelve weeks. In order for this to work, you need an archive containing both mentions and followers.
$ mastodon-archive archive --with-mentions --with-followers kensanata@dice.camp
Loading existing archive
Get user info
Get new statuses
Fetched a total of 0 new toots
Get new favourites
Fetched a total of 0 new toots
Get new notifications
Fetched a total of 2 new toots
Get followers (this may take a while)
Saving 659 statuses, 376 favourites, 478 mentions, and 107 followers
Now you're ready to determine the list of lurkers:
$ mastodon-archive followers kensanata@dice.camp
Considering the last 12 weeks
...
As I said, this is work in progress and I don't really know where I'm going with this. More on my blog.
Assume you're on the fediverse just for the conversation. You're not actually interested in following anybody who never talks to you: no journalists, no famous people, no pundits. You just want to follow regular people who interact with you. You can list the people you're following who never mentioned you, and you can unfollow them all!
There are two prerequisites, however:
- you need to add the people you're following to the archive
- you need to add the mentions to the archive (this can take a long time)
$ mastodon-archive archive --with-following --with-mentions kensanata@dice.camp
Loading existing archive
Get user info
Get new statuses
X
Added a total of 11 new items
Get new favourites
X
Added a total of 7 new items
Get new notifications and look for mentions
.....
Added a total of 7 new items
Skipping followers
Get following (this may take a while)
Saving 932 statuses, 527 favourites, 657 mentions, 107 followers, and 192 following
Given this data, you can now list the people we're interested in:
$ mastodon-archive following kensanata@dice.camp
Considering the last 12 weeks
...
All these people that never mentioned you: do you really want to follow them all? If you don't, here's how to unfollow them:
$ mastodon-archive following --unfollow kensanata@dice.camp
Considering the last 12 weeks
Unfollowing |################################| 1/125
We need to authorize the app to make changes to your account.
Registering app
This app needs access to your Mastodon account.
Visit the following URL and authorize the app:
[long URL here]
Then paste the access token here:
[access token here]
Note that the application needs the permission to unfollow people in your name, which is why you need to authorize it again.
I have a shell script called backup-mastodon which does the following:
#!/bin/sh
mkdir -p ~/Documents/Mastodon/
cd ~/Documents/Mastodon/ || exit
accounts="kensanata@octodon.social kensanata@dice.camp kensanata@tabletop.social"
echo Archive Statuses, Favourites, Mentions
for acc in $accounts; do
echo "$acc"
mastodon-archive archive --with-mentions "$acc"
done
echo Expiring Statuses
for acc in $accounts; do
echo "$acc"
mastodon-archive expire --older-than 8 --collection statuses --confirm "$acc"
done
echo Expiring Favourites
for acc in $accounts; do
echo "$acc"
mastodon-archive expire --older-than 8 --collection favourites --confirm "$acc"
done
echo Dismissing Notifications
for acc in $accounts; do
echo "$acc"
mastodon-archive expire --older-than 8 --collection mentions --delete-other-notifications --confirm "$acc"
doneThe data we have in our archive file is a hash with three keys:
accountis a User dictstatusesis a list of Toot dictsfavouritesis a list of Toot dictsmentionsis a list of Toot dicts
If you want to understand the details and the nested nature of these data structures, you need to look at the Mastodon API documentation. One way to get started is to look at what a Status entity looks like.
The setup.py determines how the app is installed and what its dependencies are.
If you checked out the repository and you want to run the code from
the working directory on a single user system, use sudo pip3 install --upgrade --editable . in your working directory to make it is
"editable" (i.e. the installation you have is linked to your working
directory, now).
If you don't want to do this for the entire system, you need your own
virtual environemt: pip3 install virtualenvwrapper, mkvirtualenv ma --python python3 (this installs and activates a virtual environment
called ma), pip install -e . (-e installs an "editable" copy)
and you're set. Use workon ma to work in that virtual environment in
the future.
jq is a lightweight and flexible command-line JSON processor. That means you can use it to work with your archive.
The following command will take all your favourites and create a map
with the keys time and message for each one of them, and put it
all in an array.
$ jq '[.favourites[] | {time: .account.username, message: .content}]' < dice.camp.user.kensanata.jsonExample output, assuming I had only a single favourite:
[
{
"time": "andrhia",
"message": "<p>It’s nice to reinvent yourself every so often, don’t you think?</p>"
}
]Now that you have token files, you can explore the Mastodon API using
curl. Your access token is the long string in the file
*.user.*.secret. Here is how to use it.
Get a single status:
curl --silent --show-error \
--header "Authorization: Bearer "$(cat dice.camp.user.kensanata.secret) \
https://dice.camp/api/v1/statuses/99005111284322450Extract the account id from your archive using jq and use echo to
strip the surrounding double quotes.
Then use the id to get some statuses from the account and use jq to
print the status ids:
ID=$(eval echo $(jq .account.id < dice.camp.user.kensanata.json))
curl --silent --show-error \
--header "Authorization: Bearer "$(cat dice.camp.user.kensanata.secret) \
"https://dice.camp/api/v1/accounts/$ID/statuses?limit=3" \
| jq '.[]|.id'There are two kinds of alternatives:
-
Solutions that extract your public toots from your profile, e.g. https://octodon.social/@kensanata. The problem there is that you'll only get "top level" toots and boosts but no replies.
- Mastotool includes media download!
- MastoUserScrape.py
-
Solutions that extract your public toots from your Atom feed, e.g. https://octodon.social/users/kensanata.atom. The problem there is that you'll only get a few pages worth of toots, not all of them.