README.md

   1 # thingy_grabber
   2 Script for archiving thingiverse things. Due to this being a glorified webscraper, it's going to be very fragile.
   3
   4 ## Usage:
   5 ````
   6 usage: thingy_grabber.py [-h] [-l {debug,info,warning}] [-d DIRECTORY] {collection,thing,user,batch,version} ...
   7
   8 positional arguments:
   9   {collection,thing,user,batch,version}
  10                         Type of thing to download
  11     collection          Download one or more entire collection(s)
  12     thing               Download a single thing.
  13     user                Download all things by one or more users
  14     batch               Perform multiple actions written in a text file
  15     version             Show the current version
  16
  17 optional arguments:
  18   -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  19   -l {debug,info,warning}, --log-level {debug,info,warning}
  20                         level of logging desired
  21   -d DIRECTORY, --directory DIRECTORY
  22                         Target directory to download into
  23 ````
  24
  25 ### Things
  26 `thingy_grabber.py thing thingid1 thingid2 ...`
  27 This will create a directory named after the title of the thing(s) with the given ID(s) and download the files into it.
  28
  29 ### Collections
  30 `thingy_grabber.py collection user_name collection_name1 collection_name2`
  31 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.
  32
  33 This will create a series of directorys `user-collection/thing-name` for each thing in the collection.
  34
  35 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.
  36
  37 ### User designs
  38 `thingy_grabber.py user user_name1, user_name2..`
  39 Where `user_name1.. ` are the names of creator.
  40
  41 This will create a series of directories `user designs/thing-name` for each thing that user has designed.
  42
  43 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.
  44
  45 ### Batch mode
  46 `thingy_grabber.py batch batch_file`
  47 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 ...`.
  48 Be warned that there is currently NO validation that you have given a correct set of commands!
  49
  50 An example:
  51 ````
  52 thing 3670144
  53 collection cwoac bike
  54 user cwoac
  55 ````
  56
  57 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`
  58 You may have to play with the quotation marks to make that work though.
  59
  60 ## Examples
  61 `thingy_grabber.py collection cwoac bike`
  62 Download the collection 'bike' by the user 'cwoac'
  63 `thingy_grabber.py -d downloads -l warning thing 1234 4321 1232`
  64 Download the three things 1234, 4321 and 1232 into the directory downloads. Only give warnings.
  65 `thingy_grabber.py -d c:\downloads -l debug user jim bob`
  66 Download all designs by jim and bob into directories under `c:\downloads`, give lots of debug messages
  67 `
  68
  69 ## Requirements
  70 python3, beautifulsoup4, requests, lxml
  71
  72 ## Current features:
  73 - can download an entire collection, creating seperate subdirs for each thing in the collection
  74 - 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
  75 - 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.
  76
  77 ## Changelog
  78 * v0.6.2
  79   - Added catches for 404s, 504s and malformed pages
  80 * v0.6.1
  81   - now downloads readme.txt and licence details
  82 * v0.6.0
  83   - added support for downloading multiple things/design sets/collections from the command line
  84 * v0.5.0
  85   - better logging options
  86   - batch mode
  87 * v0.4.0
  88   - Added a changelog
  89   - Now download associated images
  90   - support `-d` to specify base download directory
  91
  92 ## Todo features (maybe):
  93 - log to file support
  94 - less perfunctory error checking / handling
  95 - attempt to use -failed dirs for resuming
  96 - gui?
  97