Rocket.Chat Message Scraper

Export messages, channels, private groups, and direct messages from any Rocket.Chat instance using the official REST API.

What it does

Connect to any self-hosted or cloud Rocket.Chat instance and download your message history. Authenticate with a personal access token and choose which room types to export: public channels, private groups, or direct messages. Optionally filter by date range or specific room IDs.

Works with Rocket.Chat Community Edition, Enterprise Edition, and cloud-hosted workspaces.

Use cases

• Compliance archival — Export message history for legal or regulatory retention
• Migration — Move message data to a new platform or data warehouse
• Knowledge base extraction — Mine conversations for documentation and institutional knowledge
• Analytics — Analyze communication patterns, response times, and topic trends
• Backup — Create offline snapshots of workspace history

Setup: generating your personal access token

1. Log in to your Rocket.Chat instance
2. Click your avatar in the top-left corner then Profile
3. Scroll down to Personal Access Tokens
4. Click Add and give the token a name (e.g. orbtop-export)
5. If prompted, enter your password and enable 2FA if required
6. Copy both the Token and your User ID (shown above the token list)

These two values go into the Auth Token and User ID input fields.

Input parameters

Parameter	Description	Default
Instance URL	Base URL of your Rocket.Chat instance	https://open.rocket.chat
User ID	Your Rocket.Chat User ID	Required
Auth Token	Personal access token	Required
Room IDs	Limit to specific rooms (optional)	All accessible rooms
Room Types	Types to scrape: c (channels), p (private groups), d (direct messages)	All types
Date From	Only fetch messages on or after this date (ISO format)	No filter
Date To	Only fetch messages on or before this date (ISO format)	No filter
Include Thread Replies	Fetch replies nested in threads	false
Max Items	Maximum records to save (0 = unlimited)	No limit

Output format

Each exported message is saved as one dataset record:

Field	Description
instance_url	The Rocket.Chat instance base URL
room_id	Rocket.Chat room identifier
room_name	Human-readable room name
room_type	c (channel), p (private group), d (direct message)
room_topic	Room topic string
room_description	Room description string
message_id	Unique message identifier
message_rid	Room ID the message belongs to
message_ts	Message creation timestamp (ISO 8601)
message_update_at	Last edit timestamp (ISO 8601)
message_user_id	Sender User ID
message_user_username	Sender username
message_user_name	Sender display name
message_msg	Plain-text message body
message_type	Message type (empty = normal, rm = deleted, uj = join, etc.)
message_thread_msg_id	Parent message ID if this is a thread reply
message_attachments	JSON array of file/image attachments
message_reactions	JSON map of emoji reactions and users
message_urls	JSON array of embedded URLs
message_mentions	JSON array of @mentions
message_channels	JSON array of #channel references

Pricing

Pay-per-result. The actor charges a small start fee plus a per-record fee for each message saved. No charge for error records.

Notes

• The scraper pages through the Rocket.Chat API (100 messages per request). Large workspaces may take time depending on instance rate limits.
• Authentication failures produce an error record in the dataset and exit cleanly. Check the status field — AUTH_ERROR means the token is invalid or expired; INPUT_ERROR means a required field is missing.
• Thread replies require an extra API call per thread and are disabled by default. Enable with includeThreadReplies: true.
• The API only returns rooms and messages visible to the authenticated user. Admin accounts can access more rooms.
• Private groups and direct messages require the account to be a member of the room.