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The self-hosted internet archive.

Project description

ArchiveBox
Open-source self-hosted web archiving.

▶️ Quickstart | Demo | Github | Documentation | Info & Motivation | Community | Roadmap

"Your own personal internet archive" (网站存档 / 爬虫)


Language grade: Python Language grade: JavaScript Total alerts


ArchiveBox is a powerful, self-hosted internet archiving solution to collect, save, and view sites you want to preserve offline.

You can set it up as a command-line tool, web app, and desktop app (alpha), on Linux, macOS, and Windows.

You can feed it URLs one at a time, or schedule regular imports from browser bookmarks or history, feeds like RSS, bookmark services like Pocket/Pinboard, and more. See input formats for a full list.

It saves snapshots of the URLs you feed it in several formats: HTML, PDF, PNG screenshots, WARC, and more out-of-the-box, with a wide variety of content extracted and preserved automatically (article text, audio/video, git repos, etc.). See output formats for a full list.

The goal is to sleep soundly knowing the part of the internet you care about will be automatically preserved in durable, easily accessable formats for decades after it goes down.



bookshelf graphic   logo   bookshelf graphic

Demo | Screenshots | Usage
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


📦  Install ArchiveBox with Docker Compose (recommended) / Docker, or apt / brew / pip (see below).

No matter which setup method you choose, they all follow this basic process and provide the same CLI, Web UI, and on-disk data layout.

  1. Once you've installed ArchiveBox, run this in a new empty folder to get started
archivebox init --setup                   # creates a new collection in the current directory
  1. Add some URLs you want to archive
archivebox add 'https://example.com'                                     # add URLs one at a time via args / piped stdin
archivebox schedule --every=day --depth=1 https://example.com/rss.xml    # or have it import URLs on a schedule
  1. Then view your archived pages
archivebox server 0.0.0.0:8000            # use the interactive web UI
archivebox list 'https://example.com'     # use the CLI commands (--help for more)
ls ./archive/*/index.json                 # or browse directly via the filesystem

⤵️ See the Quickstart below for more...



cli init screenshot cli init screenshot server snapshot admin screenshot server snapshot details page screenshot

Key Features




grassgrass

Quickstart

🖥  Supported OSs: Linux/BSD, macOS, Windows (Docker/WSL)   👾  CPUs: amd64, x86, arm8, arm7 (raspi>=3)

⬇️  Initial Setup

(click to expand your preferred distribution below for full setup instructions)

Get ArchiveBox with docker-compose on macOS/Linux/Windows ✨ (highly recommended)

First make sure you have Docker installed: https://docs.docker.com/get-docker/

Download the docker-compose.yml file.


curl -O 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/master/docker-compose.yml'

Start the server.


docker-compose run archivebox init --setup
docker-compose up

Open http://127.0.0.1:8000.


# you can also add links and manage your archive via the CLI:
docker-compose run archivebox add 'https://example.com'
echo 'https://example.com' | docker-compose run archivebox -T add
docker-compose run archivebox status
docker-compose run archivebox help  # to see more options

# when passing stdin/stdout via the cli, use the -T flag
echo 'https://example.com' | docker-compose run -T archivebox add
docker-compose run -T archivebox list --html --with-headers > index.html

This is the recommended way to run ArchiveBox because it includes all the extractors like:
chrome, wget, youtube-dl, git, etc., full-text search w/ sonic, and many other great features.

Get ArchiveBox with docker on macOS/Linux/Windows

First make sure you have Docker installed: https://docs.docker.com/get-docker/


# create a new empty directory and initalize your collection (can be anywhere)
mkdir ~/archivebox && cd ~/archivebox
docker run -v $PWD:/data -it archivebox/archivebox init --setup

# start the webserver and open the UI (optional)
docker run -v $PWD:/data -p 8000:8000 archivebox/archivebox server 0.0.0.0:8000
open http://127.0.0.1:8000

# you can also add links and manage your archive via the CLI:
docker run -v $PWD:/data -it archivebox/archivebox add 'https://example.com'
docker run -v $PWD:/data -it archivebox/archivebox status
docker run -v $PWD:/data -it archivebox/archivebox help  # to see more options

# when passing stdin/stdout via the cli, use only -i (not -it)
echo 'https://example.com' | docker run -v $PWD:/data -i archivebox/archivebox add
docker run -v $PWD:/data -i archivebox/archivebox list --html --with-headers > index.html
Get ArchiveBox with apt on Ubuntu/Debian

This method should work on all Ubuntu/Debian based systems, including x86, amd64, arm7, and arm8 CPUs (e.g. Raspberry Pis >=3).

If you're on Ubuntu >= 20.04, add the apt repository with add-apt-repository: (on other Ubuntu/Debian-based systems follow the ♰ instructions below)


# add the repo to your sources and install the archivebox package using apt
sudo apt install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository -u ppa:archivebox/archivebox
sudo apt install archivebox

# create a new empty directory and initalize your collection (can be anywhere)
mkdir ~/archivebox && cd ~/archivebox
archivebox init --setup

# start the webserver and open the web UI (optional)
archivebox server 0.0.0.0:8000
open http://127.0.0.1:8000

# you can also add URLs and manage the archive via the CLI and filesystem:
archivebox add 'https://example.com'
archivebox status
archivebox list --html --with-headers > index.html
archivebox list --json --with-headers > index.json
archivebox help  # to see more options

♰ On other Ubuntu/Debian-based systems add these sources directly to /etc/apt/sources.list:


echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/archivebox/archivebox/ubuntu focal main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/archivebox.list
echo "deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/archivebox/archivebox/ubuntu focal main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/archivebox.list
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys C258F79DCC02E369
sudo apt update
sudo apt install archivebox
archivebox setup
archivebox --version
# then scroll back up and continue the initalization instructions above

(you may need to install some other dependencies manually however)

Get ArchiveBox with brew on macOS

First make sure you have Homebrew installed: https://brew.sh/#install


# install the archivebox package using homebrew
brew install archivebox/archivebox/archivebox

# create a new empty directory and initalize your collection (can be anywhere)
mkdir ~/archivebox && cd ~/archivebox
archivebox init --setup

# start the webserver and open the web UI (optional)
archivebox server 0.0.0.0:8000
open http://127.0.0.1:8000

# you can also add URLs and manage the archive via the CLI and filesystem:
archivebox add 'https://example.com'
archivebox status
archivebox list --html --with-headers > index.html
archivebox list --json --with-headers > index.json
archivebox help  # to see more options
Get ArchiveBox with pip on any other platforms (some extras must be installed manually)

First make sure you have Python >= v3.7 and Node >= v12 installed.


# install the archivebox package using pip3
pip3 install archivebox

# create a new empty directory and initalize your collection (can be anywhere)
mkdir ~/archivebox && cd ~/archivebox
archivebox init --setup
# Install any missing extras like wget/git/ripgrep/etc. manually as needed

# start the webserver and open the web UI (optional)
archivebox server 0.0.0.0:8000
open http://127.0.0.1:8000

# you can also add URLs and manage the archive via the CLI and filesystem:
archivebox add 'https://example.com'
archivebox status
archivebox list --html --with-headers > index.html
archivebox list --json --with-headers > index.json
archivebox help  # to see more options

⚡️  CLI Usage

# archivebox [subcommand] [--args]
# docker-compose run archivebox [subcommand] [--args]
# docker run -v $PWD:/data -it [subcommand] [--args]

archivebox init --setup      # safe to run init multiple times (also how you update versions)
archivebox --version
archivebox help
  • archivebox setup/init/config/status/manage to administer your collection
  • archivebox add/schedule/remove/update/list/shell/oneshot to manage Snapshots in the archive
  • archivebox schedule to pull in fresh URLs in regularly from boorkmarks/history/Pocket/Pinboard/RSS/etc.

🖥  Web UI Usage

archivebox manage createsuperuser
archivebox server 0.0.0.0:8000

Then open http://127.0.0.1:8000 to view the UI.

# you can also configure whether or not login is required for most features
archivebox config --set PUBLIC_INDEX=False
archivebox config --set PUBLIC_SNAPSHOTS=False
archivebox config --set PUBLIC_ADD_VIEW=False

🗄  SQL/Python/Filesystem Usage

sqlite3 ./index.sqlite3    # run SQL queries on your index
archivebox shell           # explore the Python API in a REPL
ls ./archive/*/index.html  # or inspect snapshots on the filesystem

grassgrass

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

DEMO: https://demo.archivebox.io
Usage | Configuration | Caveats


lego

Overview

Input formats

ArchiveBox supports many input formats for URLs, including Pocket & Pinboard exports, Browser bookmarks, Browser history, plain text, HTML, markdown, and more!

Click these links for instructions on how to propare your links from these sources:

# archivebox add --help
archivebox add 'https://example.com/some/page'
archivebox add < ~/Downloads/firefox_bookmarks_export.html
archivebox add --depth=1 'https://news.ycombinator.com#2020-12-12'
echo 'http://example.com' | archivebox add
echo 'any_text_with [urls](https://example.com) in it' | archivebox add

# (if using docker add -i when piping stdin)
echo 'https://example.com' | docker run -v $PWD:/data -i archivebox/archivebox add

# (if using docker-compose add -T when piping stdin / stdout)
echo 'https://example.com' | docker-compose run -T archivebox add

See the Usage: CLI page for documentation and examples.

It also includes a built-in scheduled import feature with archivebox schedule and browser bookmarklet, so you can pull in URLs from RSS feeds, websites, or the filesystem regularly/on-demand.


Archive Layout

All of ArchiveBox's state (including the index, snapshot data, and config file) is stored in a single folder called the "ArchiveBox data folder". All archivebox CLI commands must be run from inside this folder, and you first create it by running archivebox init.

The on-disk layout is optimized to be easy to browse by hand and durable long-term. The main index is a standard index.sqlite3 database in the root of the data folder (it can also be exported as static JSON/HTML), and the archive snapshots are organized by date-added timestamp in the ./archive/ subfolder.

./
    index.sqlite3
    ArchiveBox.conf
    archive/
        ...
        1617687755/
            index.html
            index.json
            screenshot.png
            media/some_video.mp4
            warc/1617687755.warc.gz
            git/somerepo.git
            ...

Each snapshot subfolder ./archive/<timestamp>/ includes a static index.json and index.html describing its contents, and the snapshot extrator outputs are plain files within the folder.


Output formats

Inside each Snapshot folder, ArchiveBox save these different types of extractor outputs as plain files:

./archive/<timestamp>/*

  • Index: index.html & index.json HTML and JSON index files containing metadata and details
  • Title, Favicon, Headers Response headers, site favicon, and parsed site title
  • SingleFile: singlefile.html HTML snapshot rendered with headless Chrome using SingleFile
  • Wget Clone: example.com/page-name.html wget clone of the site with warc/<timestamp>.gz
  • Chrome Headless
    • PDF: output.pdf Printed PDF of site using headless chrome
    • Screenshot: screenshot.png 1440x900 screenshot of site using headless chrome
    • DOM Dump: output.html DOM Dump of the HTML after rendering using headless chrome
  • Article Text: article.html/json Article text extraction using Readability & Mercury
  • Archive.org Permalink: archive.org.txt A link to the saved site on archive.org
  • Audio & Video: media/ all audio/video files + playlists, including subtitles & metadata with youtube-dl
  • Source Code: git/ clone of any repository found on github, bitbucket, or gitlab links
  • More coming soon! See the Roadmap...

It does everything out-of-the-box by default, but you can disable or tweak individual archive methods via environment variables / config.

# archivebox config --help
archivebox config # see all currently configured options
archivebox config --set SAVE_ARCHIVE_DOT_ORG=False
archivebox config --set YOUTUBEDL_ARGS='--max-filesize=500m'

Static Archive Exporting

You can export the main index to browse it statically without needing to run a server.

Note about large exports: These exports are not paginated, exporting many URLs or the entire archive at once may be slow. Use the filtering CLI flags on the archivebox list command to export specific Snapshots or ranges.

# archivebox list --help

archivebox list --html --with-headers > index.html     # export to static html table
archivebox list --json --with-headers > index.json     # export to json blob
archivebox list --csv=timestamp,url,title > index.csv  # export to csv spreadsheet

# (if using docker-compose, add the -T flag when piping)
docker-compose run -T archivebox list --html --filter-type=search snozzberries > index.json

The paths in the static exports are relative, make sure to keep them next to your ./archive folder when backing them up or viewing them.


Dependencies

For better security, easier updating, and to avoid polluting your host system with extra dependencies, it is strongly recommended to use the official Docker image with everything preinstalled for the best experience.

To achieve high fidelity archives in as many situations as possible, ArchiveBox depends on a variety of 3rd-party tools and libraries that specialize in extracting different types of content. These optional dependencies used for archiving sites include:

  • chromium / chrome (for screenshots, PDF, DOM HTML, and headless JS scripts)
  • node & npm (for readability, mercury, and singlefile)
  • wget (for plain HTML, static files, and WARC saving)
  • curl (for fetching headers, favicon, and posting to Archive.org)
  • youtube-dl (for audio, video, and subtitles)
  • git (for cloning git repos)
  • and more as we grow...

You don't need to install every dependency to use ArchiveBox. ArchiveBox will automatically disable extractors that rely on dependencies that aren't installed, based on what is configured and available in your $PATH.

If using Docker, you don't have to install any of these manually, all dependencies are set up properly out-of-the-box.

However, if you prefer not using Docker, you can install ArchiveBox and its dependencies using your system package manager or pip directly on any Linux/macOS system. Just make sure to keep the dependencies up-to-date and check that ArchiveBox isn't reporting any incompatibility with the versions you install.

# install python3 and archivebox with your system package manager
# apt/brew/pip/etc install ... (see Quickstart instructions above)

archivebox setup       # auto install all the extractors and extras
archivebox --version   # see info and check validity of installed dependencies

Installing directly on Windows without Docker or WSL/WSL2/Cygwin is not officially supported, but some advanced users have reported getting it working.



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Caveats

Archiving Private URLs

If you're importing URLs containing secret slugs or pages with private content (e.g Google Docs, unlisted videos, etc), you may want to disable some of the extractor modules to avoid leaking private URLs to 3rd party APIs during the archiving process.

# don't do this:
archivebox add 'https://docs.google.com/document/d/12345somelongsecrethere'
archivebox add 'https://example.com/any/url/you/want/to/keep/secret/'

# without first disabling share the URL with 3rd party APIs:
archivebox config --set SAVE_ARCHIVE_DOT_ORG=False  # disable saving all URLs in Archive.org

# if extra paranoid or anti-google:
archivebox config --set SAVE_FAVICON=False          # disable favicon fetching (it calls a google API)
archivebox config --set CHROME_BINARY=chromium      # ensure it's using Chromium instead of Chrome

Security Risks of Viewing Archived JS

Be aware that malicious archived JS can access the contents of other pages in your archive when viewed. Because the Web UI serves all viewed snapshots from a single domain, they share a request context and typical CSRF/CORS/XSS/CSP protections do not work to prevent cross-site request attacks. See the Security Overview page for more details.

# visiting an archived page with malicious JS:
https://127.0.0.1:8000/archive/1602401954/example.com/index.html

# example.com/index.js can now make a request to read everything from:
https://127.0.0.1:8000/index.html
https://127.0.0.1:8000/archive/*
# then example.com/index.js can send it off to some evil server

Saving Multiple Snapshots of a Single URL

Support for saving multiple snapshots of each site over time will be added eventually (along with the ability to view diffs of the changes between runs). For now ArchiveBox is designed to only archive each URL with each extractor type once. A workaround to take multiple snapshots of the same URL is to make them slightly different by adding a hash:

archivebox add 'https://example.com#2020-10-24'
...
archivebox add 'https://example.com#2020-10-25'

Storage Requirements

Because ArchiveBox is designed to ingest a firehose of browser history and bookmark feeds to a local disk, it can be much more disk-space intensive than a centralized service like the Internet Archive or Archive.today. However, as storage space gets cheaper and compression improves, you should be able to use it continuously over the years without having to delete anything.

ArchiveBox can use anywhere from ~1gb per 1000 articles, to ~50gb per 1000 articles, mostly dependent on whether you're saving audio & video using SAVE_MEDIA=True and whether you lower MEDIA_MAX_SIZE=750mb.

Storage requirements can be reduced by using a compressed/deduplicated filesystem like ZFS/BTRFS, or by turning off extractors methods you don't need. Don't store large collections on older filesystems like EXT3/FAT as they may not be able to handle more than 50k directory entries in the archive/ folder.

Try to keep the index.sqlite3 file on local drive (not a network mount), and ideally on an SSD for maximum performance, however the archive/ folder can be on a network mount or spinning HDD.




Screenshots

brew install archivebox
archivebox version
archivebox init
archivebox add archivebox data dir
archivebox server archivebox server add archivebox server list archivebox server detail



paisley graphic

Background & Motivation

The aim of ArchiveBox is to enable more of the internet to be archived by empowering people to self-host their own archives. The intent is for all the web content you care about to be viewable with common software in 50 - 100 years without needing to run ArchiveBox or other specialized software to replay it.

Vast treasure troves of knowledge are lost every day on the internet to link rot. As a society, we have an imperative to preserve some important parts of that treasure, just like we preserve our books, paintings, and music in physical libraries long after the originals go out of print or fade into obscurity.

Whether it's to resist censorship by saving articles before they get taken down or edited, or just to save a collection of early 2010's flash games you love to play, having the tools to archive internet content enables to you save the stuff you care most about before it disappears.


Image from WTF is Link Rot?...

The balance between the permanence and ephemeral nature of content on the internet is part of what makes it beautiful. I don't think everything should be preserved in an automated fashion--making all content permanent and never removable, but I do think people should be able to decide for themselves and effectively archive specific content that they care about.

Because modern websites are complicated and often rely on dynamic content, ArchiveBox archives the sites in several different formats beyond what public archiving services like Archive.org/Archive.is save. Using multiple methods and the market-dominant browser to execute JS ensures we can save even the most complex, finicky websites in at least a few high-quality, long-term data formats.

Comparison to Other Projects

comparison

Check out our community page for an index of web archiving initiatives and projects.

A variety of open and closed-source archiving projects exist, but few provide a nice UI and CLI to manage a large, high-fidelity archive collection over time.

ArchiveBox tries to be a robust, set-and-forget archiving solution suitable for archiving RSS feeds, bookmarks, or your entire browsing history (beware, it may be too big to store), including private/authenticated content that you wouldn't otherwise share with a centralized service (this is not recommended due to JS replay security concerns).

Comparison With Centralized Public Archives

Not all content is suitable to be archived in a centralized collection, wehther because it's private, copyrighted, too large, or too complex. ArchiveBox hopes to fill that gap.

By having each user store their own content locally, we can save much larger portions of everyone's browsing history than a shared centralized service would be able to handle. The eventual goal is to work towards federated archiving where users can share portions of their collections with each other.

Comparison With Other Self-Hosted Archiving Options

ArchiveBox differentiates itself from similar self-hosted projects by providing both a comprehensive CLI interface for managing your archive, a Web UI that can be used either indepenently or together with the CLI, and a simple on-disk data format that can be used without either.

ArchiveBox is neither the highest fidelity, nor the simplest tool available for self-hosted archiving, rather it's a jack-of-all-trades that tries to do most things well by default. It can be as simple or advanced as you want, and is designed to do everything out-of-the-box but be tuned to suit your needs.

If being able to archive very complex interactive pages with JS and video is paramount, check out ArchiveWeb.page and ReplayWeb.page.

If you prefer a simpler, leaner solution that archives page text in markdown and provides note-taking abilities, check out Archivy or 22120.

For more alternatives, see our list here...


dependencies graphic

Internet Archiving Ecosystem

Whether you want to learn which organizations are the big players in the web archiving space, want to find a specific open-source tool for your web archiving need, or just want to see where archivists hang out online, our Community Wiki page serves as an index of the broader web archiving community. Check it out to learn about some of the coolest web archiving projects and communities on the web!


Need help building a custom archiving solution?

Hire the team that helps build Archivebox to work on your project. (we're @MonadicalSAS on Twitter)

(They also do general software consulting across many industries)



documentation graphic

Documentation

We use the Github wiki system and Read the Docs (WIP) for documentation.

You can also access the docs locally by looking in the ArchiveBox/docs/ folder.

Getting Started

Reference

More Info



development

ArchiveBox Development

All contributions to ArchiveBox are welcomed! Check our issues and Roadmap for things to work on, and please open an issue to discuss your proposed implementation before working on things! Otherwise we may have to close your PR if it doesn't align with our roadmap.

Low hanging fruit / easy first tickets:
Total alerts

Setup the dev environment

Click to expand...

1. Clone the main code repo (making sure to pull the submodules as well)

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox
cd ArchiveBox
git checkout dev  # or the branch you want to test
git submodule update --init --recursive
git pull --recurse-submodules

2. Option A: Install the Python, JS, and system dependencies directly on your machine

# Install ArchiveBox + python dependencies
python3 -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate && pip install -e '.[dev]'
# or: pipenv install --dev && pipenv shell

# Install node dependencies
npm install
# or
archivebox setup

# Check to see if anything is missing
archivebox --version
# install any missing dependencies manually, or use the helper script:
./bin/setup.sh

2. Option B: Build the docker container and use that for development instead

# Optional: develop via docker by mounting the code dir into the container
# if you edit e.g. ./archivebox/core/models.py on the docker host, runserver
# inside the container will reload and pick up your changes
docker build . -t archivebox
docker run -it archivebox init --setup
docker run -it -p 8000:8000 \
    -v $PWD/data:/data \
    -v $PWD/archivebox:/app/archivebox \
    archivebox server 0.0.0.0:8000 --debug --reload

# (remove the --reload flag and add the --nothreading flag when profiling with the django debug toolbar)

Common development tasks

See the ./bin/ folder and read the source of the bash scripts within. You can also run all these in Docker. For more examples see the Github Actions CI/CD tests that are run: .github/workflows/*.yaml.

Run in DEBUG mode

Click to expand...
archivebox config --set DEBUG=True
# or
archivebox server --debug ...

Build and run a Github branch

Click to expand...
docker build -t archivebox:dev https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox.git#dev
docker run -it -v $PWD:/data archivebox:dev ...

Run the linters

Click to expand...
./bin/lint.sh

(uses flake8 and mypy)

Run the integration tests

Click to expand...
./bin/test.sh

(uses pytest -s)

Make migrations or enter a django shell

Click to expand...

Make sure to run this whenever you change things in models.py.

cd archivebox/
./manage.py makemigrations

cd path/to/test/data/
archivebox shell
archivebox manage dbshell

(uses pytest -s)

Build the docs, pip package, and docker image

Click to expand...

(Normally CI takes care of this, but these scripts can be run to do it manually)

./bin/build.sh

# or individually:
./bin/build_docs.sh
./bin/build_pip.sh
./bin/build_deb.sh
./bin/build_brew.sh
./bin/build_docker.sh

Roll a release

Click to expand...

(Normally CI takes care of this, but these scripts can be run to do it manually)

./bin/release.sh

# or individually:
./bin/release_docs.sh
./bin/release_pip.sh
./bin/release_deb.sh
./bin/release_brew.sh
./bin/release_docker.sh

Futher Reading





This project is maintained mostly in my spare time with the help from generous contributors and Monadical (✨ hire them for dev work!).


Sponsor this project on Github



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