feat(facebook): add challenge detection and session warming utilities

facebook-challenge.ts: session warmup, header construction, and challenge type detection. Spec document for the anti-bot challenge solver design.
This commit is contained in:
2026-05-02 19:03:00 -04:00
parent 0a246a29bf
commit ec545723bb
2 changed files with 301 additions and 0 deletions

View File

@@ -0,0 +1,173 @@
# Facebook Marketplace Anti-Bot Challenge Solver Design
## Summary
Add a challenge-detection and challenge-solving layer to the Facebook Marketplace
scraper so it can handle anti-bot gates (checkpoint pages, token rotation, cookie
requirements) programmatically.
Build the solver in pure Bun — no browser automation in production.
Use `agent-browser` only for one-time debug reconnaissance.
## Goals
- Identify which anti-bot challenge(s) Facebook Marketplace triggers against
programmatic HTTP requests.
- Implement detection + solving for each discovered challenge type.
- Wire the solver into `fetchFacebookItems` and `fetchFacebookItem` so challenges are
handled transparently.
- Follow the same pattern as the existing `ebay-challenge.ts` (detect → solve → retry
with clearance).
- Zero browser automation at runtime.
Pure `fetch` + `Bun` APIs + npm packages only.
## Non-Goals
- Solving login/auth-wall challenges (those require fresh cookies — not solvable
programmatically).
- Full account login automation (cookies must be provided by the user).
- Browser-based scraping or Puppeteer/Playwright integration.
- Solving challenges for non-Marketplace Facebook endpoints.
## Current State
The Facebook scraper (`packages/core/src/scrapers/facebook.ts`) fetches Marketplace
search and item pages via authenticated `fetch` with cookies from `FACEBOOK_COOKIE` env
var. It:
- Sends a browser-like header set (`sec-ch-ua`, `user-agent`, etc.)
- Parses SSR HTML for embedded JSON in script tags
- Has no challenge detection — if Facebook returns a challenge page, the scraper
silently fails (no listings parsed, classifies as “unknown”)
- Depends entirely on cookie freshness
The eBay scraper already follows the challenge-solver pattern in this codebase:
`ebay.ts` uses `warmEbaySession()`, `isChallengeRedirect()`, `isChallengeHtml()`, and
`solveEbayChallenge()` from `ebay-challenge.ts`.
## Chosen Approach
**Reconnaissance-first development:**
1. Use `agent-browser` (debug only) to capture a real Facebook Marketplace browsing
session via HAR.
2. Probe programmatic `fetch` to see what Facebook returns without a browser.
3. Diff the two to identify the gap (missing headers?
missing cookies? missing JS execution?).
4. Build a modular solver in `packages/core/src/utils/facebook-challenge.ts` that
detects each challenge type and applies the appropriate fix.
5. Wire it into `facebook.ts` following the eBay pattern.
## Design
### File Plan
| File | Purpose |
| --- | --- |
| `packages/core/src/utils/facebook-challenge.ts` | Challenge detection, solving, and cookie/session utilities |
| `packages/core/src/scrapers/facebook.ts` | Modified: warmup, challenge detection before parsing, retry loop |
| `packages/core/test/facebook-challenge.test.ts` | Unit tests with mock challenge HTML fixtures |
### Flow
```
fetchFacebookItems(searchUrl)
├── warmFacebookSession() → GET facebook.com/ (collect datr + Akamai cookies)
├── fetchHtml(searchUrl) → receives response
├── detectFacebookChallenge(response)
│ ├── checkpoint/challenge HTML → solveCheckpointChallenge()
│ ├── redirect to /login → fail (cookies expired)
│ ├── missing required cookies → regenerate session
│ ├── 429 rate limit → backoff + retry (existing http.ts handles this)
│ └── no challenge → proceed to parsing
├── if solveCheckpointChallenge succeeds → retry fetchHtml with clearance cookie
└── parse results
```
### Challenge Types (to be confirmed by reconnaissance)
| Type | Expected Signal | Solving Strategy |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Login wall | Redirect to `/login` or HTML `"You must log in"` | Fail — user must provide fresh cookies |
| Checkpoint page | HTML contains `checkpoint` or `challenge` path | Parse hidden form fields, compute proof-of-work if present, submit answer endpoint |
| `datr` cookie missing | No `datr` in cookie jar → request fails | Fetch homepage first to obtain `datr` (session warmup) |
| DTSG token needed | Form submissions fail with CSRF error | Extract `fb_dtsg` from page HTML, include in request body |
| GraphQL header check | Request blocked without internal headers | Extract `x-fb-friendly-name` from browser HAR, replicate |
| Akamai/bot-manager | Redirect loops or blank pages without Akamai cookies | Homepage warmup to collect `bm_sv`, `bm_mi`, etc. |
### Key Modules
**`facebook-challenge.ts`:**
```
// Session warmup — fetch homepage to prime cookies
warmFacebookSession(): Promise<Record<string, string>>
// Challenge detection
detectFacebookChallenge(html, status, url, headers): ChallengeType | null
// Checkpoint solver
solveCheckpointChallenge(html, cookies): Promise<ChallengeResult>
// DTSG token extraction
extractDtsg(html): string | null
// Cookie jar management (shared with ebay.ts pattern)
mergeCookies(...): Record<string, string>
```
**`ChallengeResult` type:**
```ts
interface ChallengeResult {
solved: boolean;
cookies?: Record<string, string>; // clearance cookies to replay
token?: string; // challenge response token
error?: string; // why it failed
}
```
### Error Handling
- Solver failure → return `ChallengeResult { solved: false, error: "..." }`, scraper
logs warning and returns empty results (never throws).
- Unrecognized challenge → log the response URL and HTML snippet for future analysis.
- Rate limits → handled by existing `http.ts` exponential backoff (no change needed).
- Solver timeout → 30s cap on any challenge computation, fall back to `solved: false`.
### Testing
| Test | What It Verifies |
| --- | --- |
| `detectFacebookChallenge` with sample checkpoint HTML | Correctly identifies checkpoint challenge |
| `detectFacebookChallenge` with normal search HTML | Returns null (no false positives) |
| `detectFacebookChallenge` with login redirect | Identifies auth-gated |
| `solveCheckpointChallenge` with known PoW params | Produces correct answer |
| `warmFacebookSession` with mocked fetch | Collects expected cookies |
| `extractDtsg` with sample page HTML | Extracts the DTSG token |
| Integration: fetch → challenge → solve → retry → results | End-to-end mock flow |
| Solver throws → scraper returns empty, no crash | Graceful fallback |
| Solver unknown challenge → logs warning, returns empty | No unhandled challenge crashes |
Test data will use anonymized HTML fixtures (no real user data).
## Reconnaissance Steps (debug-only, one-time)
1. **Probe programmatically:** `fetch` Marketplace search with/without cookies, record
status code and HTML.
2. **Browser session:** `agent-browser` → log into Facebook → navigate Marketplace →
record HAR.
3. **Diff analysis:** Compare browser request headers vs.
our programmatic headers.
4. **Cookie inventory:** List all cookies from browser session, identify which are
essential.
5. **Challenge trigger:** Identify what change in request signature triggers a
challenge.
6. **Replay test:** Replay browsers exact request via `fetch` to confirm
headers/cookies are the differentiator.
All reconnaissance artifacts saved under `docs/facebook-challenge/`.
## Decisions Deferred to Post-Reconnaissance
- Exact challenge types and solving strategies (depends on what Facebook actually uses).
- Whether a PoW solver, CAPTCHA solver, or token-extraction approach is needed.
- npm package dependencies (only add what the reconnaissance proves necessary).

View File

@@ -0,0 +1,128 @@
// Facebook Marketplace session & challenge utilities
// ------------------ Types ------------------
export type ChallengeType =
| "login_wall"
| "checkpoint"
| "bad_headers"
| "rate_limited"
| "none";
// ------------------ Constants ------------------
const FACEBOOK_BROWSER_HEADERS: Record<string, string> = {
accept:
"text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/avif,image/webp,image/apng,*/*;q=0.8,application/signed-exchange;v=b3;q=0.7",
"accept-language": "en-GB,en-US;q=0.9,en;q=0.8",
"cache-control": "no-cache",
"upgrade-insecure-requests": "1",
"sec-fetch-dest": "document",
"sec-fetch-mode": "navigate",
"sec-fetch-site": "none",
"sec-fetch-user": "?1",
"sec-ch-ua":
'"Google Chrome";v="131", "Chromium";v="131", "Not_A Brand";v="24"',
"sec-ch-ua-mobile": "?0",
"sec-ch-ua-platform": '"Linux"',
"user-agent":
"Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/131.0.0.0 Safari/537.36",
};
// ------------------ Cookie Management ------------------
function parseSetCookies(setCookieHeaders: string[]): Record<string, string> {
const cookies: Record<string, string> = {};
for (const header of setCookieHeaders) {
const parts = header.split(";");
const firstPart = parts[0]?.trim();
if (!firstPart) continue;
const eqIdx = firstPart.indexOf("=");
if (eqIdx === -1) continue;
const name = firstPart.slice(0, eqIdx).trim();
const value = firstPart.slice(eqIdx + 1).trim();
if (name && value) {
cookies[name] = value;
}
}
return cookies;
}
function cookiesToHeader(cookies: Record<string, string>): string {
return Object.entries(cookies)
.map(([name, value]) => `${name}=${value}`)
.join("; ");
}
// ------------------ Session Warmup ------------------
export async function warmFacebookSession(): Promise<Record<string, string>> {
try {
const res = await fetch("https://www.facebook.com/", {
method: "GET",
headers: FACEBOOK_BROWSER_HEADERS,
redirect: "manual",
signal: AbortSignal.timeout(10000),
});
const setCookies = res.headers.getSetCookie?.() ?? [];
return parseSetCookies(setCookies);
} catch {
return {};
}
}
// ------------------ Challenge Detection ------------------
export function detectFacebookChallenge(
status: number,
html: string,
responseUrl: string,
): ChallengeType {
if (status === 400) {
return "bad_headers";
}
if (status === 429) {
return "rate_limited";
}
if (responseUrl.includes("/login/")) {
return "login_wall";
}
if (html.includes("You must log in") || html.includes("log in to continue")) {
return "login_wall";
}
if (
responseUrl.includes("/checkpoint/") ||
(html.includes("checkpoint") && html.includes("challenge"))
) {
return "checkpoint";
}
return "none";
}
// ------------------ Header Construction ------------------
export function buildFacebookHeaders(
cookieJar: Record<string, string>,
extraHeaders?: Record<string, string>,
): Record<string, string> {
const headers: Record<string, string> = {
...FACEBOOK_BROWSER_HEADERS,
};
const cookieString = cookiesToHeader(cookieJar);
if (cookieString) {
headers.cookie = cookieString;
}
if (extraHeaders) {
Object.assign(headers, extraHeaders);
}
return headers;
}