add error handling

[clinton/thingy_grabber.git] / README.md

# thingy_grabber
Script for archiving thingiverse things. Due to this being a glorified webscraper, it's going to be very fragile.

## Usage:
````
usage: thingy_grabber.py [-h] [-l {debug,info,warning}] [-d DIRECTORY] {collection,thing,user,batch,version} ...

positional arguments:
  {collection,thing,user,batch,version}
                        Type of thing to download
    collection          Download one or more entire collection(s)
    thing               Download a single thing.
    user                Download all things by one or more users
    batch               Perform multiple actions written in a text file
    version             Show the current version

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -l {debug,info,warning}, --log-level {debug,info,warning}
                        level of logging desired
  -d DIRECTORY, --directory DIRECTORY
                        Target directory to download into
````

### Things
`thingy_grabber.py thing thingid1 thingid2 ...`
This will create a directory named after the title of the thing(s) with the given ID(s) and download the files into it.

### Collections
`thingy_grabber.py collection user_name collection_name1 collection_name2`
Where `user_name` is the name of the creator of the collection (not nes. your name!) and `collection_name1...etc` are the name(s) of the collection(s) you want.

This will create a series of directorys `user-collection/thing-name` for each thing in the collection.

If for some reason a download fails, it will get moved sideways to `thing-name-failed` - this way if you rerun it, it will only reattmpt any failed things.

### User designs
`thingy_grabber.py user user_name1, user_name2..`
Where `user_name1.. ` are the names of creator.

This will create a series of directories `user designs/thing-name` for each thing that user has designed.

If for some reason a download fails, it will get moved sideways to `thing-name-failed` - this way if you rerun it, it will only reattmpt any failed things.

### Batch mode
`thingy_grabber.py batch batch_file`
This will load a given text file and parse it as a series of calls to this script. The script should be of the form `command arg1 ...`.
Be warned that there is currently NO validation that you have given a correct set of commands!

An example:
````
thing 3670144
collection cwoac bike
user cwoac
````

If you are using linux, you can just add an appropriate call to the crontab. If you are using windows, it's a bit more of a faff, but at least according to [https://www.technipages.com/scheduled-task-windows](this link), you should be able to with a command something like this (this is not tested!): `schtasks /create /tn thingy_grabber /tr "c:\path\to\thingy_grabber.py -d c:\path\to\output\directory batch c:\path\to\batchfile.txt" /sc weekly /d wed /st 13:00:00`
You may have to play with the quotation marks to make that work though.

## Examples
`thingy_grabber.py collection cwoac bike`
Download the collection 'bike' by the user 'cwoac'
`thingy_grabber.py -d downloads -l warning thing 1234 4321 1232`
Download the three things 1234, 4321 and 1232 into the directory downloads. Only give warnings.
`thingy_grabber.py -d c:\downloads -l debug user jim bob`
Download all designs by jim and bob into directories under `c:\downloads`, give lots of debug messages
`

## Requirements
python3, beautifulsoup4, requests, lxml

## Current features:
- can download an entire collection, creating seperate subdirs for each thing in the collection
- If you run it again with the same settings, it will check for updated files and only update what has changed. This should make it suitible for syncing a collection on a cronjob
- If there is an updated file, the old directory will be moved to `name_timestamp` where `timestamp` is the last upload time of the old files. The code will then copy unchanged files across and download any new ones.

## Changelog
* v0.6.2
  - Added catches for 404s, 504s and malformed pages
* v0.6.1
  - now downloads readme.txt and licence details
* v0.6.0
  - added support for downloading multiple things/design sets/collections from the command line
* v0.5.0
  - better logging options
  - batch mode
* v0.4.0
  - Added a changelog
  - Now download associated images
  - support `-d` to specify base download directory 

## Todo features (maybe):
- log to file support
- less perfunctory error checking / handling
- attempt to use -failed dirs for resuming
- gui?