discord-incremental-backup

A script which uses Tyrrrz/DiscordChatExporter to make incremental backups of Discord channel categories, including threads and forum posts to be viewed in slatinsky/DiscordChatExporter-frontend.

Tested on Linux only.

Note: Automating user accounts violates Discord TOS. Use at your own risk.

Prerequisites

• Python 3.11+.
• A Discord user token with access to channels you want to export (guide).

Usage (Linux)

git clone https://github.com/queze1/discord-incremental-backup.git
cd discord-incremental-backup/

# set up venv (ignore if not using venv)
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

# find the latest version for your platform from https://github.com/Tyrrrz/DiscordChatExporter/releases
wget https://github.com/Tyrrrz/DiscordChatExporter/releases/download/2.46/DiscordChatExporter.Cli.linux-x64.zip
unzip DiscordChatExporter.Cli.linux-x64.zip -d dce/
chmod +x dce/DiscordChatExporter.Cli

# copy sample config and edit it
cp config.example.json config.json
nano config.json

# run the script
python3 main.py

config.json example

{
  "token": "YOUR_DISCORD_USER_TOKEN_HERE",
  "categories": [
    "123456789012345678"
  ],
  "excluded_channels": [],
  "threads": []
}

How It Works

1. Find channels from channel_ids.txt, skipping inaccessible or invalid channels.
2. Find Discord channels, threads and forum posts according to config.json.
3. Save successfully found channels to channel_ids.txt.
4. For each channel:
   1. If a pre-existing export exists, and the last exported message is identical to the channel's last message (i.e. no new messages), skip.
   2. If a pre-existing export does not exist, or if only one partition exists (channels are split every 1000 messages by default), export into /output, overwriting the previous export.
   3. If more than one partition exists:
      • Delete the latest (incomplete) partition.
      • Export into /output_temp, starting from the last message of the second-last partition.
      • Move the new partitions into /output and rename them.
      • Normalise paths so they point to /output/media.
      • E.g. A channel has 5000 messages, 2500 of which are backed up into 3 partitions. The 3rd partition (containing 500 messages) is deleted, and the export begins from the 2001st message. 3 new partitions are created into /output_temp. Then, they are moved into /output and renamed to parts 3-5.

Differences with slatinsky/DiscordChatExporter-incrementalBackup

1. Only supports one Discord token.
2. Backs up channel categories, not servers.
3. Allows excluding Discord channels from backup.
4. Uses dolfies/discord.py-self to find archived threads and forum posts instead of DCE (faster).
5. Requires manual input for active threads/forum posts (limitation from dolfies/discord.py-self).
6. Doesn't require installing slatinsky/DiscordChatExporter-frontend.

Known Issues

• Images not displaying on Tyrrrz/DiscordChatExporter, even when the relative path is correct.