This code will allow you to make a book (📔 pdf) from your messenger and telegram messages!
Have you already wanted to make a book from your private messages (Messenger, Telegram, Whatsapp, SMS)? In fact, we are more and more using such messages, could it be for a casual talk "Do we meet here?", but you've probably noticed that these messages also support feelings, jokes, and sometimes big discussions about life. These messages probably replaced the letters some people were used to send to their friends and beloved. This is why, having these messages on a material form - a book for example - is temptating! And I think it is a wonderful gift 🎁
In reality this idea is already developed, for example some companies propose to transform your messages into a book, and you can find several of them if you google it. Still, what they offer is usually with a fixed layout, and without customization. In addition, the style they propose is so that it looks like a photo book, rather than a novel or a book.
But some people developed their solutions, as you can find with Pelle Beckman article or Basile Bruneau's article. The latter is really nice as it gathers several data sources: SMS, messenger, other.
In this repository, I just want to propose a solution that works for Messenger and Telegram messages, and transform them into a book. It uses python to process the data from Messenger and/or Telegram, and transform them into a .tex file. Then, latex is used to produce a book.
Normally you can find everything you need here, but feel free to launch an issue.
Enjoy! 🎊
PS1: feel free to contribute, add features, ⭐️ it, and/or share it!
PS2: I did this project on my free time and super quickly. I opened it because friends asked me to. So please, be gentle with the current features and code quality 🙈
Credits: Thank you Basile for the inspiration (you can have a look to his wonderful blog), and Alexandre and Maud for the Christmas sprint we did for this gift!
To launch the code you will require python3 and Latex (in fact, xelatex). Be sure to have it installed on your computer. To be honest, you will probably need to have a little knowledge in both of these tools to complete your book, but it is very easy to find documentations online.
First, clone this repository.
Toy data are available in this repository, and before doing your own book, please be sure that the command line python main.py is working. It should produce the .tex files in the section part. Then, open the document template.tex and compile it with xelatex. Normally it whould produce a toy example. Note that you can custom the template.tex to change the color, the font, of your document.
First, go on your Facebook account and download your messages and pictures. It can take a few hours, and to my experience you have to download all your messages and you can not choose only one conversation. You will obtain something like this:
.
+-- archived_threads
+-- inbox
| +-- your_friend
+-- message_requests
+-- stickers_used
Note the name of the folder with the messages you are interested in. Typically it can contain gifs, photos, videos, audio and one - or several ir you are talking a lot (😉) - json files. It contains the messages in questions. Please, don't touch anything from this folder, and just keep note of the name of the folder and the path.
Please, rename your photos folder with photos_old name. (I know it is a little bit dirty, but it is to manage telegram and messenger)
Telegram allows you to download your messages per conversation. Be careful to export it in json format. The resulting folder should contain:
.
+-- photos
+-- result.json
+-- stickers
+-- video_files
Please, don't touch anything from this folder, and just keep note of the name of the folder and the path.
Once your have your data, you will need to set up the parameters for the main.py. I know I could have written a beautiful command line, but in fact, I find easier that you open the main.py script, and just change the parameters in the top of the document, rather than having a super long command line in bash.
Anyway, you only need to change the path to the previously downloaded data, the source of the data (messenger or telegram), and to put your name and your friend's name. For this last step, open the json document that contains your messages and spot the names that are registered. And then replace the names. The ME corresponds to the flushleft author in the final book. Be carefull to put exactly the same string sequence as in the json.
DATA_PATH = 'data/messenger/' # './data/telegram/ChatExport_2020-12-06/' for typical telegram path
SOURCE = 'messenger' # or 'telegram'
ME = 'Me' # update with what you see in the json
MY_FRIEND = 'My friend' # update with what you see in the json
You don't need to change other parts of the code.
Compile the .tex files into youf .pdf book! (using Xelatex)
Now, you can print it! 🎉