Saved Scraper - Scraping your saved posts on Reddit

Introduction

A script designed to go through your saved posts and comments on Reddit, put them in an SQLite database and optionally export it to a .csv file for ease of access.

If the saved content already exists in the database, then it will not be duplicated.

It can be also used as a module if desired.

Note: If you have more than 1000 comments and posts saved, this script will not be able to capture all of them due to limitations in the API. See Obfuscation and API limitations.

Installation

Part 1 - Creating a Reddit application

1. Go to your Reddit account's authorised applications page.
2. Find the button that allows you to create an app and click on it.
3. The name can be set to anything, I recommend "saved-scraper". The description and about can be left blank, however, the uri must be set to something. I recommend "http://www.example.com/unused/redirect/uri" as per the outdated but useful nonetheless archived PRAW (Python Reddit API Wrapper) documentation. It will not be all that relevant for this script anyway.
4. Press the "create app" button. Note the client id, located below the text that says "personal use script", and client secret as they will be used in the next section.

WARNING: KEEP client id AND client secret PRIVATE - THIS SHOULD ONLY BE KNOWN BY YOU.

Part 2 - Installing the script

Note: You will need to have installed Python 3.10+ for this script to work. Compatibility with older versions not guaranteed.

Note: You will need to install 3rd party modules praw and dotenv. If unsure how to install them, see the official document Installing Python Modules. The former is used to access your Reddit account, the latter is for isolating your login details, as well as client id and client secret.

1. Clone or download this repository.

2. [Pick branch of choice, see subheadings]

   2a. Using a .env file (recommended)

   In the same folder which the script is in, create a file called .env.

   The .env should look like the following:

   CLIENT_ID=[INSERT "client id"]
   CLIENT_SECRET=[INSERT "client secret"]
   USER_AGENT=desktop:saved_scraper:v0.0.1 (by u/[INSERT YOUR USERNAME])
   
   USER_NAME=[INSERT YOUR USERNAME]
   USER_PASS=[INSERT YOUR PASSWORD]
   

   Where there are brackets, do not include them when you insert values. For example, CLIENT_ID=AbCDEF_G192V.
   CLIENT_ID is 22 characters long, CLIENT_SECRET is 30 characters long.

   2b. Manually inputting the details

   In the script, where main() is called set True to False and it will prompt you to add the details via the input() function.

3. Run the file! By default, it will scrape all of your saved content, create a database and put the data there and then export the contents of the database to a .csv file.

Using the produced .csv file

• Sub - the Subreddit which the post/comment belongs to
• Type - if it is a comment or a post. 0 means post, 1 means comment
• ID - The ID of the content.
• Title - The title of the post. If it is a comment, it is the title of the post which it is under.
• URL - The link to it. Put reddit.com before the URL listed to access the link directly to it.