Wayback Machine Downloader
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
