Rocket.Chat Message Scraper - Export Chat History via REST API

Export messages, channels, private groups, and direct messages from any Rocket.Chat instance using the official REST API. Works with Rocket.Chat Community Edition, Enterprise Edition, and cloud-hosted workspaces. Authenticate with a User ID and personal access token, then filter by room type, date range, or specific room IDs.

What does the Rocket.Chat scraper do?

It connects to the Rocket.Chat REST API, enumerates rooms accessible to the authenticated user (channels, private groups, and optionally direct messages), and paginates through message history at 100 messages per request. Thread replies can be enabled with an extra API call per thread. Usernames and display names are resolved per message.

For very large workspaces, use maxItems to limit run size and re-run with dateFrom set to the previous run's cutoff to process incrementally.

Typical throughput on a self-hosted instance depends on that instance's rate limit configuration. The API pages at 100 messages per request, so a workspace with 100,000 messages requires approximately 1,000 API calls.

What data does it extract?

Each record represents one Rocket.Chat message:

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

Sample output record

{
  "instance_url": "https://open.rocket.chat",
  "room_name": "general",
  "room_type": "c",
  "message_id": "abc123xyz",
  "message_ts": "2024-06-01T09:14:22.000Z",
  "message_user_username": "jane.smith",
  "message_user_name": "Jane Smith",
  "message_msg": "Here's the updated runbook for the deploy process.",
  "message_type": "",
  "message_reactions": "{\":thumbsup:\":{\"usernames\":[\"john.doe\"],\"names\":[\"John Doe\"]}}",
  "message_attachments": "[]",
  "message_urls": "[]"
}

How to use it

Generating a personal access token

1. Log in to your Rocket.Chat instance
2. Click your avatar, then select Profile
3. Scroll to Personal Access Tokens and click Add
4. Copy both the Token and your User ID shown above the token list

The token path may vary between Rocket.Chat Community and Enterprise UI versions. Administrators can also generate tokens from Admin Panel → Users for any account.

Input parameters

Parameter	Required	Description
instanceUrl	Yes	Base URL of your Rocket.Chat instance (e.g. https://chat.example.com)
userId	Yes	Your Rocket.Chat User ID
authToken	Yes	Personal access token
roomIds	No	Limit to specific room IDs. Leave empty for all accessible rooms.
roomTypes	Yes	Array of room types: c (channels), p (private groups), d (direct messages)
dateFrom	No	Only fetch messages on or after this date (ISO format)
dateTo	No	Only fetch messages on or before this date (ISO format)
includeThreadReplies	No	Fetch replies nested in threads (adds extra API calls). Default: false
maxItems	No	Maximum records to save. 0 = unlimited

Example input

{
  "instanceUrl": "https://chat.yourcompany.com",
  "userId": "your-user-id",
  "authToken": "your-access-token",
  "roomTypes": ["c", "p"],
  "dateFrom": "2024-01-01",
  "maxItems": 10000
}

Use cases

• Compliance archival — export message history for legal or regulatory retention from enterprise self-hosted deployments
• Platform migration — extract messages before moving to Slack, Microsoft Teams, or a custom data warehouse
• Knowledge base extraction — mine channel history for documentation; message_msg is plain text ready for import into Confluence, Notion, or a RAG pipeline
• Communication analytics — analyze message volume, response times, and topic trends across channels and time windows
• Backup — create offline snapshots of workspace history before a major upgrade or infrastructure change

FAQ

Does this work with cloud-hosted Rocket.Chat? Yes. Set instanceUrl to your cloud workspace URL. The REST API is identical across hosting models.

What rooms can the actor access? Only rooms visible to the authenticated user. Public channels, private groups the user belongs to, and (if enabled) direct messages. Admin accounts can access more rooms than regular users.

How do I handle authentication errors? Authentication failures produce an error record with status: AUTH_ERROR. Verify that the User ID and token are from the same Rocket.Chat instance and that personal access tokens are enabled by your admin.

Output is available in JSON, CSV, and Excel via the Apify dataset export panel.