Semi-OT: Downloading old fics from archive.org

Where stuff about fanfiction that doesn't fit into any other category goes. Including Polls, RPGs & Multiple Author Works

Try to make sure that new topics here actually couldn't actually go somewhere else.

Semi-OT: Downloading old fics from archive.org

Postby slickrcbd » Sat Jun 15, 2019 9:47 pm

Does anybody know an easy way to download some nearly-last fics from archive.org that were stored as text files, one chapter per file?
Downthemall in Firefox 56 refuses to download any files, giving a "temporary error". Right-clicking on the file gives an HTML wrapper rather than the actual content.
Archive.org is a bit slow, almost as bad as a 56K modem, so going one chapter at a time, highlighting, and copy/pasting into Notepad is slow and tedious.

Any suggestions on a way to simply grab all the links to the chapters and save the original file to disk like I used to do with Downthemall for the last 15+ years?
Also DTA is a bit depreciated since it doesn't work with the latest versions of Firefox. I'm not married to that solution, I'm willing to take suggestions including other browsers like Pale Moon, Chrome, Opera, etc, or other tools, although I haven't looked in so long the only thing I can name is an old file downloader for Mac OS 7-9.X called "Monica" that I used before DownThemAll (haven't tested because my Mac died in 2010 and I didn't think it was worth fixing a 300mhz PowerMac 6500/300 in 2010 when it needed rare, proprietary parts).
slickrcbd
Chibi Sailor Senshi
Posts: 275
 

Re: Semi-OT: Downloading old fics from archive.org

Postby PCHeintz72 » Sun Jun 16, 2019 4:14 am

Rather than browser, have you attempted to use an offline reader instead...

I have not tried it with Archive.org, but I use a old one called PageNest Free for that type of grab...
PCHeintz72
User avatar
Prism Power Senshi
Posts: 2736
 

Re: Semi-OT: Downloading old fics from archive.org

Postby slickrcbd » Sun Jun 16, 2019 7:36 pm

I haven't tried anything like that. I was asking for options, and hoping somebody already had a tested solution they use themselves. Why reinvent the wheel?
slickrcbd
Chibi Sailor Senshi
Posts: 275
 

Re: Semi-OT: Downloading old fics from archive.org

Postby PCHeintz72 » Sun Jun 16, 2019 10:12 pm

Meh, well, I just tried it with PageNest Free on a random Archive.ORG fan fiction page link I had to an older story (a multi- chapter You're Under Arrest story called 'Love Takes a Backseat' by Lara Bartram) and it seemed to work fine for me and correctly downloaded the subpages...

Though the one thing I did have to do was specify the non-https version of the link.... not sure if that was due to the particular page I tried, or some limitation of the old PageNest Free program I am using.

So it is at least in part viable. Again, at least on the particular page I tested it with.

Note, sometimes archive.org does not actually have a particular subpage, I doubt pagenest or any other similar offline reader/browser solution would help in such a case, as it has to be there, to grab it.
PCHeintz72
User avatar
Prism Power Senshi
Posts: 2736
 

Re: Semi-OT: Downloading old fics from archive.org

Postby slickrcbd » Mon Jun 17, 2019 7:03 am

True enough, in the past I've seen it where I have to try multiple dates before I can grab all the chapters of a story because the archive for a particular date only has SOME of the chapters. Which chapters are there differ for dates, but no date appeared to have them all.
Wound up using Downthemall multiple times and moving the files larger than 1K to another folder in between.
slickrcbd
Chibi Sailor Senshi
Posts: 275
 


Return to Miscellaneous, Polls, RPGs

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users