Download each and every xkcd comic uploaded! Like ever!

Author:	Tasdik Rahman

Contents

• 1   Features
• 2   Demo
• 3   Usage
  • 3.1   --help
  • 3.2   --download-latest
  • 3.3   --download=XKCDNUMBER
  • 3.4   --download-range <START> <END>
  • 3.5   --download-all
  • 3.6   --path=PATH
  • 3.7   --show XKCD_NUM
• 4   Installation
  • 4.1   Option 1: installing through pip (Suggested way)
  • 4.2   Option 2: installing from source
  • 4.3   Upgrading
  • 4.4   Uninstalling
  • 4.5   For Arch distributions
• 5   Contributing
  • 5.1   Contributors
  • 5.2   To-do
  • 5.3   Known Issues
  • 5.4   Bugs
• 6   Changelog
• 7   Motivation
• 8   Legal stuff
• 9   Donation

1   Features

• Can download all the xkcd's uploaded till date(1603 as I am writing this!).
• Download individual xkcd's and store them
• Download ranges of xkcd's and store them
• Download the latest issue xkcd
• Download the meta text inside each xkcd and store it
• No duplicacy in your XKCD database.
• Stores each xkcd in a separate file named as the title of the xkcd at your home directory
• Writes a description.txt for each xkcd. Storing meta-data like
  • date-publised
  • url value
  • a small description of that xkcd
  • The alt text on the comic
• written in uncomplicated python.

2   Demo

Usage

Each Comic is stored in it's own individual folder with a description.txt placed in it. It contains meta-data like - img-link - title - date-published - alt

Here's a little example for the same

xkcd_archive Structure

3   Usage

When running for the first time, do a xkcd-dl --update-db

$ xkcd-dl --update-db
XKCD link database updated
Stored it in 'xkcd_dict.json'. You can start downloading your XKCD's!
Run 'xkcd-dl --help' for more options
$

3.1   --help

$ xkcd-dl --help
usage: xkcd-dl [-h] [-u] [-l] [-d XKCD_NUM | -a]
               [-r [DOWNLOAD_RANGE [DOWNLOAD_RANGE ...]]] [-v] [-P PATH]
               [-s XKCD_NUM]

Run `xkcd-dl --update-db` if running for the first time.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -u, --update-db       Update the database
  -l, --download-latest
                        Download most recent comic
  -d XKCD_NUM, --download XKCD_NUM
                        Download specified comic by number
  -a, --download-all    Download all comics
  -r [DOWNLOAD_RANGE [DOWNLOAD_RANGE ...]], --download-range [DOWNLOAD_RANGE [DOWNLOAD_RANGE ...]]
                        Download specified range
  -v, --version         show program's version number and exit
  -P PATH, --path PATH  set path
  -s XKCD_NUM, --show XKCD_NUM
                        Show specified comic by number

3.2   --download-latest

This downloads the last uploaded xkcd comic and stores under the home directory of the user with a brief description

$ xkcd-dl --download-latest
Downloading xkcd from 'http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/flashlights.png' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd_archive/1603'
$

If it has been downloaded, will not do anything

This command will work even if you have not run --update-db yet.

3.3   --download=XKCDNUMBER

Downloads the particular XKCDNUMBER(given that it exists and has not been downloaded already) and stores it in the home directory

$ xkcd-dl --download=143
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/143/' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd_archive/143'
$ xkcd-dl --download=1603
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/1603/' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd_archive/1603'
xkcd  number '1603' has already been downloaded!
$

3.4   --download-range <START> <END>

Will take two number parameters and download all the xkcd's between the two, inclusive.

$ xkcd-dl --download-range 32 36
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/32/' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd_archive/32'
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/33/' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd_archive/33'
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/34/' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd_archive/34'
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/35/' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd_archive/35'
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/36/' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd_archive/36'

3.5   --download-all

As the name suggests, will download all the xkcd's uploaded till date and store them under the home directory of the user.

$ xkcd-dl --download-all
Downloading all xkcd's Till date!!
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/1466' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd_archive/1466'
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/381' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd_archive/381'
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/198' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd_archive/198'
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/512' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd_archive/512'
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/842' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd_archive/842'
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/920' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd_archive/920'
....
....

3.6   --path=PATH

To use a custom directory to store your xkcd_archive, you can append --path=./any/path/here to the end of any download method. Absolute and relative paths work, but the directory must already exist.

$ xkcd-dl --download=3 --path=comic
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/3/' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/comic/xkcd_archive/3'
$ xkcd-dl --download-range 54 56 --path=/home/tasdik/xkcd
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/54/' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd/xkcd_archive/54'
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/55/' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd/xkcd_archive/55'
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/56/' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd/xkcd_archive/56'

3.7   --show XKCD_NUM

Opens the specified comic. Downloads it, if not downloaded already. Prints the alt text and metadata to stdout.

$ xkcd-dl --show 32
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/32/' and storing it under '/home/bk/Documents/xkcd-dl/xkcd_dl/xkcd_archive/32'
title : Pillar
date-publised: 2006-1-1
url: http://xkcd.com/32/
alt: A comic by my brother Doug, redrawn and rewritten by me

$ xkcd-dl -s 1000
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/1000/' and storing it under '/home/bk/Documents/xkcd-dl/xkcd_dl/xkcd_archive/1000'
xkcd  number '1000' has already been downloaded!
title : 1000 Comics
date-publised: 2012-1-6
url: http://xkcd.com/1000/
alt: Thank you for making me feel less alone.

4   Installation

4.1   Option 1: installing through pip (Suggested way)

pypi package link

$ pip3 install xkcd-dl

If you are behind a proxy

$ pip3 --proxy [username:password@]domain_name:port install xkcd-dl

Note: If you get command not found then $ sudo apt-get install python3-pip should fix that

4.2   Option 2: installing from source

$ git clone https://github.com/tasdikrahman/xkcd-dl.git
$ cd xkcd-dl/
$ pip3 install -r requirements.txt
$ python3 setup.py install

4.3   Upgrading

$ pip3 install -U xkcd-dl

4.4   Uninstalling

$ pip3 uninstall xkcd-dl

4.5   For Arch distributions

Here is the AUR link for you

• Arch package

5   Contributing

I hacked this up in one night, so its a little messy up there. Feel free to contribute.

1. Fork it.
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-awesome-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Added <xyz> feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-awesome-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request

5.1   Contributors

Big shout out to

• Ian C for fixing issue #2 which stopped the download if a title of a comic had a special character in it and BlitzKraft for pointing it out.
• BlitzKraft for adding the feature to download the alt-text from the the xkcd and major clean ups!
• Braden Best for pointing out the issues when installing from source apart from his valuable input.

5.2   To-do

• [x] add xkcd-dl --download-latest
• [x] add xkcd-dl --download=XKCDNUMBER
• [x] add xkcd-dl --download-all
• [x] add xkcd-dl download-range <START> <END>
• [x] add path setting with [--path=/path/to/directory] option
• [x] add exclude list to easily recognize and ignore dynamic comics i.e. comics without a default image.
• [x] Remove redundant code in download_xkcd_number(), download_latest() and download_all() (Refactoring!!)
• [x] Adding support to open a particular xkcd at the CLI itself. Implemented using xdg-open. Opens using your default image viewer.
• [x] Add tests

5.3   Known Issues

• There have been issues when installed from source if you are using python 2.* as discussed in #5. So using python3.* is suggested.
• If you get command not found when installing, it may mean that you don't have pip3 installed. $ sudo apt-get install python3-pip should fix that. To check your version of pip
• Dynamic comics have to be added manually using the excludeList

$ pip3 --version
pip 1.5.6 from /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages (python 3.4)
$

5.4   Bugs

Please report the bugs at the issue tracker

OR

You can tweet me at @tasdikrahman if you can't get it to work. In fact, you should tweet me anyway.

6   Changelog

• 0.1.2:

  bug: fixed relative import error in setup.py added support for gif files when renaming downloaded image (#38)

7   Motivation

xkcd-dl is inspired by an awesome package called youtube-dl written by Daniel Bolton (Much respect!)

How about you get to download all of the xkcd which have been uploaded till date? This does just that!

Now I don't know about you, but I just love reading xkcd's! Had a boring Sunday night looming over, thought why not create something like youtube-dl but for downloading xkcd's!

And hence xkcd-dl

Cheers to a crazy night!

8   Legal stuff

Built with ♥ by Tasdik Rahman (@tasdikrahman) and others released under MIT License

You can find a copy of the License at http://prodicus.mit-license.org/

9   Donation

If you have found my little bits of software of any use to you, you can help me pay my internet bills :)