AdrianMuntean / social-media-checker

Social media checker

A colection (cough 2 cough) of scripts that checks for

• Notifications
• Friend requests
• Messages

on Facebook and Linkedin.

The scripts does not use any API but scraps the information out the website using Selenium. This project was created for fun and to overcome the need to check for new activity on the social media platforms.

Basically the opportunities are limitless because of using Selenium. This acts as a browser and the interaction with any web platform is possible.

Requirements for running the checkers:

1. Python 3
2. Selenium
3. Web Driver
4. Chrome

Running the scripts

Before getting the benefits of not spending time on checking the activity a few settings must be completed in config.py:

• Credentials:

  'facebook': {'email': '[e-mail]',
               'password': 'thebestpassword'
               }, 
  

  and

  'linkedin': {'email': '[e-mail]',
               'password': 'anotherbestpassword'
               }`
  

• Path to chrome driver

  chrome_driver_path = /path/to/chromedriver
  

• [Optionally] Configure what checks should be done [by default all are checked]

   linkedin_checks = {
       'message_check': True,
       'notification_check': True,
       'connection_invitation_check': True
   }

   linkedin_actions = {
   	'accept_all_invites': True
   }

and

facebook_checks = {
    'message_check': True,
    'notification_check': True,
    'friend_request_check': True
}

After all these settings are completed, the script must be started with

    sh start_linkedin_checker.sh

and/or

    sh start_fb_checker.sh

Output

The output (at the moment) is some plain text formatted a bit to be more readable:

Hello Adrian Muntean, checking for Linkedin:

----------------------
You have 1 new notification(s)
  ->         Victor Pascu reshared a post
0 messages
You have 1 new invite(s))
----------------------

or

Hello Adrian Muntean, checking for Facebook:

----------------------
0 notifications
0 messages
0 friend requests
----------------------

Downsides

Is cool not to check facebook and linkedin (and possibly other platforms in the future) but there are a couple of downsides of this project of which I am aware of:

1. Having to add your credentials (password especially) in plain text in a config file is not cool
   • I am working on removing that confing and use the already logged in browser
2. The speed in ...not great: ~9-10 seconds for one platform
   • WIP
3. Bugs probably...
4. Heavy tailored for actual state of platforms, if they will change, an update will be needed