edx-helper 0.6.1

Simple tool to download video and lecture materials from edx.org.

edx-helper

edx-helper is forked from edx-dl which is no longer maintained.

• Introduction
• Installation instructions
  • Installation (recommended)
  • Manual Installation
  • Docker container
  • Optional: update youtube-dl
• Quick Start
  • List courses
  • Download course
  • More download options
• Troubleshooting
  • china-issues
• Reporting issues
• Supported sites
• Disclaimer

Introduction

edx-helper is a simple tool to download videos and lecture materials from Open edX-based sites.

It is platform independent, and should work fine under Unix (Linux, BSDs etc.), Windows or Mac OS X.

Installation instructions

edx-helper requires Python 3 and very few other dependencies. (As of October 2023, edx-helper passed the test of Python versions 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, 3.10, and 3.11).

Installation (recommended)

Opening a terminal and typing the command If you have installed Python:

pip install edx-helper

Manual Installation

pip install git+https://github.com/csyezheng/edx-helper.git

or

git clone https://github.com/csyezheng/edx-helper.git
cd edx-helper
pip install -r requirements.txt
python setup.py install

Docker container

You can run this application via Docker if you want. Just install docker and run

docker run --rm -it \
       -v "$(pwd):/Downloaded" \
       csyezheng/edx-helper -u <USER> -p <PASSWORD> COURSE_URL

• Please note that it will prompt that unable to find the image locally, please wait patiently for downloading.
• The course files will be downloaded to your current directory.

Optional: update youtube-dl

One of the most important dependencies of edx-helper is youtube-dl. The installation step listed above already pulls in the most recent version of youtube-dl for you.

Unfortunately, since many Open edX sites store their videos on Youtube and Youtube changes their layout from time to time, it may be necessary to upgrade your copy of youtube-dl. There are many ways to proceed here, but the simplest is to simply use:

pip install --upgrade youtube-dl

Quick Start

Run the following command to query the usage and options:

edx-helper --help

List courses

Run the following command to query the courses in which you are enrolled:

edx-helper -u <email or username> --list-courses

Download course

From there, choose the course you are interested in, copy its URL and use it in the following command:

edx-helper -u <email or username> COURSE_URL

Your downloaded videos will be placed in a new directory called Downloaded, inside your current directory, but you can also choose another destination with the -o argument.

More download options

Normal download:

edx-helper -u <user> COURSE_URL

Download with subtitles:

edx-helper -u <user> --with-subtitles COURSE_URL

Specify download directory：

edx-helper -u <user> -o ~/courses/ COURSE_URL

Specify additional downloads by extension:

edx-helper -u <user> --file-formats "png,jpg" COURSE_URL

Download CDN videos, do not download youtube videos:

edx-helper -u <user> --prefer-cdn-videos COURSE_URL

To see all available options and a brief description of what they do, simply execute:

edx-helper --help

Important Note: To use sites other than <edx.org>, you have to specify the site along with the -x option. For example, -x stanford, if the course that you want to get is hosted on Stanford's site.

Troubleshooting

china-issues

China cannot access YouTube. Please use the --prefer-cdn-videos option first, or use the --ignore-errors option. If you want to download YouTube videos, please use a proxy.

Reporting issues

Before reporting any issue please follow the steps below:

1. Verify that you are running the latest version of all the programs (both of edx-helper and of youtube-dl). Use the following command if in doubt:

    pip install --upgrade edx-helper
   

2. If you get an error like "YouTube said: Please sign in to view this video.", then we can't do much about it. You can try to pass your credentials to youtube-dl (see https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl#authentication-options) with the use of edx-helper's option --youtube-dl-options. If it doesn't work, then you will have to tell edx-helper to ignore the download of that particular video with the option --ignore-errors.

3. If the problem persists, feel free to open an issue in our bug tracker, please fill the issue template with as much information as possible.

Supported sites

Except for edx, they have not been tested and are not supported yet. They may be supported in the future.

These are the current supported sites:

• edX
• Stanford
• University of Sydney
• France Université Numérique
• GW Online SEAS - George Washington University
• GW Online Open - George Washington University

This is the full [list of sites powered by Open edX][https://github.com/edx/edx-platform/wiki/Sites-powered-by-Open-edX]. Not all of them are supported at the moment, we welcome you to contribute support for them and send a pull request also via our issue tracker.

Disclaimer

edx-helper is meant to be used only for your material that edX gives you access to download. We do not encourage any use that violates their Terms Of Use.