A majority of Linux users prefer sticking to their terminal rather than accessing through a GUI for most of their daily tasks. Have you ever wondered whether there is any way to access Facebook from terminal? The answer is Yes… Now, its possible to access Facebook from the terminal.
fbcmd application gives you a command line interface for Facebook. Surprisingly , it is available for Windows OS as well.
Installation of this app in Ubuntu/ Linux is pretty simple.
Make sure you have php installed in your system. If not, install as follows
sudo apt-get install php5 php5-cli
To test your PHP environment, try typing the following in the command prompt:
php -r “echo phpversion();”
While you’re at it, make sure this outputs “1”.
php -r “echo ini_get(‘allow_url_fopen’);”
Download fbcmd.zip from the this link and Unzip the file
unzip fbcmd.zip
cd fbcmd
To finish the installation:
sudo php fbcmd_update.php
sudo php fbcmd_update.php install
Type fbcmd to begin
fbcmd
Welcome to fbcmd! [version 1.0-beta5-dev1]
This application needs to be authorized to access your Facebook account.
You are almost done! This application needs to be authorized to access your Facebook account. This is a one time process.
Step 1: Allow basic (initial) access to your acount via this url, execute:
fbcmd go access
Step 2: Generate an offline authorization code, execute:
fbcmd go auth
Step 3: Obtain your authorization code (XXXXXX) and then execute:
fbcmd auth XXXXXX
Step 4: Most FBCMD commands require additional permissions. To grant default permissions, execute
fbcmd addperm
You are done !
To know the syntax , execute
fbcmd help
The following are a few commands that I found interesting..
How to list [and optionally save] all your friend’s profile photos
fbcmd ppics =all /tmp/fbcmd/ppics/
How to list [and optionally save] all photos where friend(s) are tagged
fbcmd fpics
How to list any friends who are currently online
fbcmd fonline
How to export all your friend’s B’day date in csv format
fbcmd finfo birthday_date -csv
How to know your profile ID
fbcmd whoami
How to set your status update
fbcmd status “is excited to play with fbcmd”
What not? Start playing with this app
fbcmd help #is your friend..
With this application, you can even schedule for a list of status updates to get posted in regular intervals with the help of a cron job 
Isn’t that awesome? Start playing around with it and do let me know your feedback..
