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Wayback Machine Downloader

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Download an entire website from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

Installation

You need to install Ruby on your system (>= 1.9.2) - if you don't already have it. Then run:

gem install wayback_machine_downloader

Tip: If you run into permission errors, you might have to add sudo in front of this command.

Basic Usage

Run wayback_machine_downloader with the base url of the website you want to retrieve as a parameter (e.g., http://example.com):

wayback_machine_downloader http://example.com

How it works

It will download the last version of every file present on Wayback Machine to ./websites/example.com/. It will also re-create a directory structure and auto-create index.html pages to work seamlessly with Apache and Nginx. All files downloaded are the original ones and not Wayback Machine rewritten versions. This way, URLs and links structure are the same as before.

Advanced Usage

Usage: wayback_machine_downloader http://example.com

Download an entire website from the Wayback Machine.

Optional options:
    -d, --directory PATH             Directory to save the downloaded files into
				     Default is ./websites/ plus the domain name
    -s, --all-timestamps             Download all snapshots/timestamps for a given website
    -f, --from TIMESTAMP             Only files on or after timestamp supplied (ie. 20060716231334)
    -t, --to TIMESTAMP               Only files on or before timestamp supplied (ie. 20100916231334)
    -e, --exact-url                  Download only the url provided and not the full site
    -o, --only ONLY_FILTER           Restrict downloading to urls that match this filter
				     (use // notation for the filter to be treated as a regex)
    -x, --exclude EXCLUDE_FILTER     Skip downloading of urls that match this filter
				     (use // notation for the filter to be treated as a regex)
    -a, --all                        Expand downloading to error files (40x and 50x) and redirections (30x)
    -c, --concurrency NUMBER         Number of multiple files to download at a time
				     Default is one file at a time (ie. 20)
    -p, --maximum-snapshot NUMBER    Maximum snapshot pages to consider (Default is 100)
				     Count an average of 150,000 snapshots per page
    -l, --list                       Only list file urls in a JSON format with the archived timestamps, won't download anything

Specify directory to save files to

-d, --directory PATH

Optional. By default, Wayback Machine Downloader will download files to ./websites/ followed by the domain name of the website. You may want to save files in a specific directory using this option.

Example:

wayback_machine_downloader http://example.com --directory downloaded-backup/

All Timestamps

-s, --all-timestamps

Optional. This option will download all timestamps/snapshots for a given website. It will uses the timestamp of each snapshot as directory.

Example:

wayback_machine_downloader http://example.com --all-timestamps 

Will download:
	websites/example.com/20060715085250/index.html
	websites/example.com/20051120005053/index.html
	websites/example.com/20060111095815/img/logo.png
	...

From Timestamp

-f, --from TIMESTAMP

Optional. You may want to supply a from timestamp to lock your backup to a specific version of the website. Timestamps can be found inside the urls of the regular Wayback Machine website (e.g., https://web.archive.org/web/20060716231334/http://example.com). You can also use years (2006), years + month (200607), etc. It can be used in combination of To Timestamp. Wayback Machine Downloader will then fetch only file versions on or after the timestamp specified.

Example:

wayback_machine_downloader http://example.com --from 20060716231334

To Timestamp

-t, --to TIMESTAMP

Optional. You may want to supply a to timestamp to lock your backup to a specific version of the website. Timestamps can be found inside the urls of the regular Wayback Machine website (e.g., https://web.archive.org/web/20100916231334/http://example.com). You can also use years (2010), years + month (201009), etc. It can be used in combination of From Timestamp. Wayback Machine Downloader will then fetch only file versions on or before the timestamp specified.

Example:

wayback_machine_downloader http://example.com --to 20100916231334

Exact Url

-e, --exact-url

Optional. If you want to retrieve only the file matching exactly the url provided, you can use this flag. It will avoid downloading anything else.

For example, if you only want to download only the html homepage file of example.com:

wayback_machine_downloader http://example.com --exact-url

Only URL Filter

 -o, --only ONLY_FILTER

Optional. You may want to retrieve files which are of a certain type (e.g., .pdf, .jpg, .wrd...) or are in a specific directory. To do so, you can supply the --only flag with a string or a regex (using the '/regex/' notation) to limit which files Wayback Machine Downloader will download.

For example, if you only want to download files inside a specific my_directory:

wayback_machine_downloader http://example.com --only my_directory

Or if you want to download every images without anything else:

wayback_machine_downloader http://example.com --only "/\.(gif|jpg|jpeg)$/i"

Exclude URL Filter

 -x, --exclude EXCLUDE_FILTER

Optional. You may want to retrieve files which aren't of a certain type (e.g., .pdf, .jpg, .wrd...) or aren't in a specific directory. To do so, you can supply the --exclude flag with a string or a regex (using the '/regex/' notation) to limit which files Wayback Machine Downloader will download.

For example, if you want to avoid downloading files inside my_directory:

wayback_machine_downloader http://example.com --exclude my_directory

Or if you want to download everything except images:

wayback_machine_downloader http://example.com --exclude "/\.(gif|jpg|jpeg)$/i"

Expand downloading to all file types

 -a, --all

Optional. By default, Wayback Machine Downloader limits itself to files that responded with 200 OK code. If you also need errors files (40x and 50x codes) or redirections files (30x codes), you can use the --all or -a flag and Wayback Machine Downloader will download them in addition of the 200 OK files. It will also keep empty files that are removed by default.

Example:

wayback_machine_downloader http://example.com --all

Only list files without downloading

 -l, --list

It will just display the files to be downloaded with their snapshot timestamps and urls. The output format is JSON. It won't download anything. It's useful for debugging or to connect to another application.

Example:

wayback_machine_downloader http://example.com --list

Maximum number of snapshot pages to consider

-p, --snapshot-pages NUMBER

Optional. Specify the maximum number of snapshot pages to consider. Count an average of 150,000 snapshots per page. 100 is the default maximum number of snapshot pages and should be sufficient for most websites. Use a bigger number if you want to download a very large website.

Example:

wayback_machine_downloader http://example.com --snapshot-pages 300

Download multiple files at a time

-c, --concurrency NUMBER

Optional. Specify the number of multiple files you want to download at the same time. Allows one to speed up the download of a website significantly. Default is to download one file at a time.

Example:

wayback_machine_downloader http://example.com --concurrency 20

Using the Docker image

As an alternative installation way, we have a Docker image! Retrieve the wayback-machine-downloader Docker image this way:

docker pull hartator/wayback-machine-downloader

Then, you should be able to use the Docker image to download websites. For example:

docker run --rm -it -v $PWD/websites:/websites hartator/wayback-machine-downloader http://example.com

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Just submit a pull request via GitHub.

To run the tests:

bundle install
bundle exec rake test