falocalrepo 3.0.3

Pure Python program to download any user's gallery/scraps/favorites and more from FurAffinity forum in an easily handled database.

FALocalRepo

Pure Python program to download any user's gallery/scraps/favorites from the FurAffinity forum in an easily handled database.

Introduction

This program was born with the desire to provide a relatively easy-to-use method for FA users to download submissions that they care about from the forum.

This program uses a custom scraping library to get content from FurAffinity. This is developed as a separate package also available on PyPi and GitLab. The data thus collected is then stored into a SQLite3 database and the submissions files are saved in a tiered tree structure based on their ID's.

Contents

1. Installation
2. How to Read Usage Instructions
3. Cookies
4. Usage
   1. Help
   2. Init
   3. Configuration
   4. Download
   5. Database
5. Database
   1. Settings
   2. Users
   3. Submissions
6. Submission Files
7. Upgrading from Earlier Versions
8. Issues
9. Appendix

Installation & Requirements

To install the program it is sufficient to use Python pip and get the package falocalrepo.

python3 -m pip install falocalrepo

Python 3.8 or above is needed to run this program, all other dependencies are handled by pip during installation. For information on how to install Python on your computer, refer to the official website Python.org.

The program needs cookies from a logged-in FurAffinity session to download protected pages. Without the cookies the program can still download publicly available pages, but others will return empty. See #Cookies for more details on which cookies to use.

Warning: FurAffinity theme needs to be set to "beta"

How to Read Usage Instructions

• command a static command keyword
• <arg> <param> value an argument, parameter, value, etc... that must be provided to a command
• [<optional>] an optional argument that can be omitted

Cookies

The scraping library used by this program needs two specific cookies from a logged-in FurAffinity session. These are cookie a and cookie b.

As of 2020-08-09 these take the form of hexadecimal strings like 356f5962-5a60-0922-1c11-65003b703038.

The easiest way to obtain these cookies is by using a browser extension to extract your cookies and then search for a and b.
Alternatively, the storage inspection tool of a desktop browser can also be used. For example on Mozilla's Firefox this can be opened with ⇧F9 shortcut.

To set the cookies use the config cookies command. See #Configuration for more details.

Usage

To run the program, simply call falocalrepo in your shell after installation.

Running without arguments will prompt a help message with all the available options and commands.

Generally, commands need to be in the following format:

falocalrepo [-h] [-v] [-d] <command> [<arg1>] ... [<argN>]

Available options are:

• -h, --help show help message
• -v, --version show program version
• -d, --database show database version

Available commands are:

• help display the manual of a command
• init create the database and exit
• config manage settings
• download perform downloads
• database operate on the database

Note: all the commands with the exception of help will create and initialise the database if it is not present in the folder

When the database is first initialised, it defaults the submissions files folder to FA.files. This value can be changed using the config command.

Cookies need to be set manually with the config command before the program will be able to access protected pages.

Help

help [<command>]

The help command gives information on the usage of the program and its commands. Run alone for help on the whole program and with a single argument to get help for a specific command.

falocalrepo help

falocalrepo help download

Init

The init command initialises the database or, if one is already present, updates to a new version - if available - and then exits.

It can be used to create the database and then manually edit it, or to update it to a new version without calling other commands.

Configuration

config [<setting>] [<value1>] ... [<valueN>]

The config command allows to change the settings used by the program.

Running the command alone will show the current values of the settings stored in the database. Running config <setting> without value arguments will show the current value of that specific setting.

Available settings are:

• cookies [<cookie a>] [<cookie b>] the cookies stored in the database.

falocalrepo config cookies 38565475-3421-3f21-7f63-3d341339737 356f5962-5a60-0922-1c11-65003b703038

• files-folder [<new folder>] the folder used to store submission files. This can be any path relative to the folder of the database. If a new value is given, the program will move any files to the new location.

falocalrepo config files-folder SubmissionFiles

Download

download <operation> [<arg1>] ... [<argN>]

The download command performs all download and repository update operations.

Available operations are:

• update update the repository by checking the previously downloaded folders (gallery, scraps or favorites) of each user and stopping when it finds a submission that is already present in the repository. Requires no arguments.
• users <user1>,...,<userN> <folder1>,...,<folderN> download specific user folders. Requires two arguments in the format is one of gallery, scraps or favorites.

falocalrepo download users tom,jerry gallery,scraps

• submissions <id1> ... [<idN>] download specific submissions. Requires submission ID's provided as separate arguments.

falocalrepo download submissions 12345678 13572468 87651234

Database

database [<operation>] [<param1>=<value1>] ... [<paramN>=<valueN>]

The database command allows to operate on the database. Used without an operation command shows the database statistics (number of users and submissions and time of last update) and version.

Available operations are:

• search <param1>=<value1> ... [<paramN>=<valueN>] search the submissions entries using metadata fields. Search is conducted case-insensitively using the SQLite like expression which allows for limited pattern matching. For example this string can be used to search two tags together separated by an unknown amount of characters cat,%mouse. The following search parameters are supported:
  • author author (uploader) in display format - e.g. with underscores "_" -
  • title
  • date
  • description
  • tags alphabetically sorted tags (keywords)
  • category
  • species
  • gender
  • rating

falocalrepo database search tags=cat,%mouse date=2020-% category=%artwork%

• manual-entry <param1>=<value1> ... <paramN>=<valueN> add a submission to the database manually. The submission file is not downloaded and can instead be provided with the extra parameter file_local_url. The following parameters are necessary for a submission entry to be accepted:
  • id submission id
  • title
  • author
  • date date in the format YYYY-MM-DD
  • category
  • species
  • gender
  • rating
    The following parameters are optional:
  • tags comma-separated tags
  • description
  • file_url the url of the submission file, not used to download the file
  • file_local_url if provided, take the submission file from this path and put it into the database

falocalrepo database manual-entry id=12345678 'title=cat & mouse' author=CartoonArtist \
    date=2020-08-09 category=Artwork 'species=Unspecified / Any' gender=Any rating=General \
    tags=cat,mouse,cartoon 'description=There once were a cat named Tom and a mouse named Jerry.' \
    'file_url=http://remote.url/to/submission.file' file_local_url=path/to/submission.file

• check-errors check the database for common errors and prints a list of entries that contain erroneous data. Requires no arguments.
• remove-users <user1> ... [<userN>] remove specific users from the database.

falocalrepo database remove-users jerry

• remove-submissions <id1> ... [<idN>] remove specific submissions from the database.

falocalrepo database remove-submissions 12345678 13572468 87651234

• clean clean the database using the SQLite VACUUM function. Requires no arguments.

Database

To store the metadata of the downloaded submissions, downloaded users, cookies and statistics, the program uses a SQLite3 database. This database is built to be as light as possible while also containing all the metadata that can be extracted from a submission page.

To store all this information, the database uses three tables: SETTINGS, USERS and SUBMISSIONS.

Settings

The settings table contains settings for the program and statistics of the database.

• USRN number of users in the USERS table
• SUBN number of submissions in the SUBMISSIONS table
• LASTUPDATE time when the last update was completed (UNIX time in seconds)
• LASTSTART time when the program was last started (UNIX time in seconds)
• COOKIES cookies for the scraper, stored in JSON format
• FILESFOLDER location of downloaded submission files
• VERSION database version, this can differ from the program version

Users

The users table contains a list of all the users that have been download with the program, the folders that have been downloaded and the submissions found in each of those.

Each entry contains the following fields:

• USERNAME The URL username of the user (no underscores or spaces)
• FOLDERS the folders downloaded for that specific user.
• GALLERY
• SCRAPS
• FAVORITES
• EXTRAS this is a legacy entry used by the program up to version 2.11.2

Submissions

The submissions table contains the metadata of the submissions downloaded by the program and information on their files

• ID the id of the submission
• AUTHOR the username of the author (uploader) in full format
• TITLE
• UDATE upload date in the format YYYY-MM-DD
• DESCRIPTION description in html format
• TAGS keywords sorted alphanumerically and comma-separated
• CATEGORY
• SPECIES
• GENDER
• RATING
• FILELINK the remote URL of the submission file
• FILEEXT the extensions of the downloaded file. Can be empty if the file contained errors and could not be recognised upon download
• FILESAVED 1 if the file was successfully downloaded and saved, 0 if there was an error during download

Submission Files

Submission files are saved in a tiered tree structure based on their submission ID. ID's are zero-padded to 10 digits and then broken up in 5 segments of 2 digits; each of this segments represents a folder tha will be created in the tree.

For example, a submission 1457893 will be padded to 0001457893 and divided into 00, 01, 45, 78, 93. The submission file will then be saved as 00/01/45/78/93/submission.file with the correct extension extracted from the file itself - FurAffinity links do not always contain the right extension and often confuse jpg and png -.

Upgrading from Earlier Versions

When the program starts, it checks the version of the database against the one used by the program and if the latter is more advanced it updates the database.

Note: Versions before 2.7.0 are not supported by falocalrepo version 3.0.0 and above. To update from those to the new version use version 2.11.2 to update the database to version 2.7.0

2.7.0 → 3.0.0

Information from the database are copied over to the new version, but otherwise remain unaltered save for a few changed column names in the SUBMISSIONS and USERS tables.

Files are moved to the new structure and the old files folder is deleted. Only submissions files are kept starting from version 3.0.0

Contributing

Al contributions and suggestions are welcome!

The only requirement is that any merge request must be sent to the GitLab project as the one on GitHub is only a mirror: GitLab/FALocalRepo

If you have suggestions for fixes or improvements, you can open an issue with your idea, see #Issues for details.

Issues

If any problem is encountered during usage of the program, an issue can be opened on the project's pages on GitLab (preferred) or GitHub (mirror repository).

Issues can also be used to suggest improvements and features.

When opening an issue for a problem, please copy the error message and describe the operation in progress when the error occurred.

Appendix

Earlier Releases

Release 3.0.0 was deleted from PyPi because of an error in the package information. However, it can still be found in the code repository under tag v3.0.0.

Release binaries for versions 2.11.x can be found on GitLab under tags -> FALocalRepo/tags 2.11

Release binaries before and including 2.10.2 can be found on GitHub -> Releases.