falocalrepo 3.25.0

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

FALocalRepo

Pure Python program to download submissions, journals, and user folders 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.

The data is stored into a SQLite database, and the submissions files are saved in a tiered tree structure based on their ID's. Using SQLite instead of a client-server database makes the program extremely portable, only needing a working Python 3.9+ installation to work, and allows the downloaded data to be moved and backed up by simply moving/copying the database file and submissions files folder.

All download operations are performed through the custom FurAffinity scraping library faapi. To ensure proper crawling behavior the library strictly follows FurAffinity's robots.txt in regard to allowed paths and crawl delay. Furthermore, submission files downloads are throttled to 100 KB/s to ensure the program won't use too much bandwidth.

The database and file-storage functions are handled independently by the falocalrepo-database package which performs all transactions, queries, and file operations.

The falocalrepo-server package is used to provide the server functionalities of the program.

Contents

1. Installation and Update
2. Cookies
3. Usage
   1. Environmental Variables
   2. Error Codes
   3. Help
   4. Update
   5. Init
   6. Configuration
   7. Download
   8. Database
4. Database
   1. Settings
   2. Users
   3. Submissions
   4. Journals
5. Submission Files
6. Upgrading Database
7. Contributing
8. Issues
9. Appendix

Installation and Update

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

python3 -m pip install falocalrepo

Python 3.9 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.

To upgrade the falocalrepo and its dependencies, use pip to upgrade all three components.

python3 -m pip install --upgrade falocalrepo faapi falocalrepo-database falocalrepo-server

To check for updates use the update command. A message will appear if there is an update available for any component.

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 template must be set to "modern". Can be changed at furaffinity.net/controls/settings/.

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 the ⇧F9 shortcut.

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

Usage

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
• param=<value> a keyword argument with a static key and a value
• [<arg>] an optional argument that can be omitted
• <arg1> | <arg2> mutually exclusive arguments, only use one

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.

The usage pattern for the program is as follows:

falocalrepo [-h | -v | -d | -s | -u] [<command> [<operation>] [<arg1> ... <argN>]]

Available options are:

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

Available commands are:

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

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

Note: only one instance of the program is allowed at any given time when performing download operations

Note: only one connection to a database is allowed at any given time, if the database is opened in other processes, the program will close with an error

Note: the program will not operate if the version of the database does not match the version of the falocalrepo-database module. Only database info and database upgrade commands can be run if the database is not up-to-date.

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.

Environmental Variables

falocalrepo supports the following environmental variables:

• FALOCALREPO_DATABASE sets a path for the database rather than using the current folder. If the path basename ends with .db -- e.g. ~/Documents/FA/MyFA.db -- , then a database file will be created/opened with that name. Otherwise, the path will be considered a folder, and a database named "FA.db" will be created therein.
• FALOCALREPO_DEBUG always print traceback of caught exceptions, regardless of whether they are known or not.

Error Codes

If the program encounters a fatal error, the error is printed to STDERR and the program exits with a specific error code:

• 1 MalformedCommand, UnknownCommand command error.
• 2 MultipleInstances another instance of the program was detected.
• 3 UnknownFolder an unknown download folder was given to the download command.
• 4 ConnectionError a connection error was encountered during download.
• 5 DatabaseError, IntegrityError an error with the database file occurred.
• 6 TypeError, AssertionError a type error was encountered.
• 7 an unknown exception was encountered. The full traceback is saved to a FA.log file located in the current working directory.

The exception traceback is printed only for unknown exception (error 7). Using the FALOCALREPO_DEBUG environmental variable forces printing of traceback for all exceptions.

Help

help [<command> [<operations>]]

The help command gives information on the usage of the program and its commands and operations.

falocalrepo help

falocalrepo help download

falocalrepo help database search-users

Update

update [shell]

The update command checks for updates to falocalrepo and its main dependencies on PyPi. The optional shell command can be used to output the python pip command to upgrade the components with available updates.

Note: The command needs an internet connection.

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 list 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:

• list list stored settings.
• cookies [<cookie1 name>=<cookie1 value>] ... [<cookieN name>=<cookieN value>] the cookies stored in the database.

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

• files-folder [move=<move-files>] [<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. Setting the <move-files> value to false skips the moving and simply updates the database entry.

falocalrepo config files-folder SubmissionFiles

Download

download <operation> [<option>=<value>] [<arg1>] ... [<argN>]

The download command performs all download and repository update operations. Submission thumbnails are downloaded alongside the main data and are stored as thumbnail.jpg in the submission folder ( see Submission Files).

Available operations are:

• users <user1>[,...,<userN>] <folder1>[,...,<folderN>] download specific user folders. Requires two arguments with comma-separated users and folders. Prepending list- to a folder allows to list all remote items in a user folder without downloading them. Supported folders are:
  • gallery
  • scraps
  • favorites
  • journals

falocalrepo download users tom,jerry gallery,scraps,journals

falocalrepo download users tom,jerry list-favorites

• update [stop=<n>] [deactivated=<deactivated>] [<user1>,...,<userN>] [<folder1>,...,<folderN>] update the repository by checking the previously downloaded folders (gallery, scraps, favorites or journals) of each user and stopping when it finds a submission that is already present in the repository. Can pass a list of users and/or folders that will be updated if in the database. To skip users, use @ as argument. The stop=<n> option allows to stop the update after finding n submissions in a user's database entry, defaults to 1. If a user is deactivated, the folders in the database will be prepended with a '!'. Deactivated users will be skipped when update is called, unless the <deactivated> option is set to true.

falocalrepo download update stop=5

falocalrepo download update deactivated=true @ gallery,scraps

falocalrepo download update tom,jerry

• submissions <id1> ... [<idN>] download specific submissions. Requires submission IDs provided as separate arguments, if a submission is already in the database it is ignored.

falocalrepo download submissions 12345678 13572468 87651234

• journals <id1> ... [<idN>] download specific journals. Requires journal IDs provided as separate arguments, if a journal is already in the database it is ignored.

falocalrepo download journals 123456 135724 876512

Database

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

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

All search operations are conducted case-insensitively using the SQLite like expression which allows for a limited pattern matching. For example this expression can be used to search two words together separated by an unknown amount of characters %cat%mouse%. Fields missing wildcards will only match an exact result, i.e. cat will only match a field equal to cat whereas %cat% wil match a field that contains cat. Bars (|) can be used to isolate individual items in list fields.

All search operations support the extra order, limit, and offset parameters with values in SQLite ORDER BY clause , LIMIT clause format, and OFFSET clause. The order parameter supports all fields of the specific search command.

Available operations are:

• info show database information, statistics and version.
• history show commands history
• search-users [json=<json>] [columns=<columns>] [<param1>=<value1>] ... [<paramN>=<valueN>] search the users entries using metadata fields. Search parameters can be passed multiple times to act as OR values. All columns of the users table are supported: #Users. The any parameter can be used to match against any column. Parameters can be lowercase. If no parameters are supplied, a list of all users will be returned instead. If <json> is set to 'true', the results are printed as a list of objects in JSON format. If <columns> is passed, then the objects printed with the JSON option will only contain those fields.

falocalrepo database search-users json=true folders=%gallery%

• search-submissions [json=<json>] [columns=<columns>] [<param1>=<value1>] ... [<paramN>=<valueN>] search the submissions entries using metadata fields. Search parameters can be passed multiple times to act as OR values. All columns of the submissions table are supported: #Submissions. The any parameter can be used to match against any column. Parameters can be lowercase. If no parameters are supplied, a list of all submissions will be returned instead. If <json> is set to 'true', the results are printed as a list of objects in JSON format. If <columns> is passed, then the objects printed with the JSON option will only contain those fields.

falocalrepo database search-submissions tags=%|cat|%|mouse|% date=2020-% category=%artwork% order="AUTHOR" order="ID"

falocalrepo database search-submissions json=true columns=id,author,title author='CatArtist' tags=%|cat|% tags=%|mouse|% date=2020-% category=%artwork%

• search-journals [json=<json>] [columns=<columns>] [<param1>=<value1>] ... [<paramN>=<valueN>] search the journals entries using metadata fields. Search parameters can be passed multiple times to act as OR values. All columns of the journals table are supported: #Journals. The any parameter can be used to match against any column. Parameters can be lowercase. If no parameters are supplied, a list of all journals will be returned instead. If <json> is set to 'true', the results are printed as a list of objects in JSON format. If <columns> is passed, then the objects printed with the JSON option will only contain those fields.

falocalrepo database search-journals date=2020-% author=CatArtist order="ID DESC"

falocalrepo database search-journals json=true columns=id,author,title date=2020-% date=2019-% content=%commission%

• add-user <json> Add or replace a user entry into the database using metadata from a JSON file. If the user already exists in the database, fields may be omitted from the JSON, except for the ID. Omitted fields will not be replaced in the database and will remain as they are. The following fields are supported:
  • username
    The following fields are optional:
  • folders

falocalrepo database add-user ./user.json

• add-submission <json> [file=<file>] [thumb=<thumb>] Add or replace a submission entry into the database using metadata from a JSON file. If the submission already exists in the database, fields may be omitted from the JSON, except for the ID. Omitted fields will not be replaced in the database and will remain as they are. The optional <file> and <thumb> parameters allow adding or replacing the submission file and thumbnail respectively. The following fields are supported:
  • id
  • title
  • author
  • date date in the format YYYY-MM-DD
  • description
  • category
  • species
  • gender
  • rating
  • type image, text, music, or flash * 'folder' gallery or scraps
  • fileurl the remote URL of the submission file
    The following fields are optional:
  • tags list of tags, if omitted it defaults to existing entry or empty
  • favorite list of users that faved the submission, if omitted it defaults to existing entry or empty
  • mentions list of mentioned users, if omitted it defaults to existing entry or mentions are extracted from the description
  • userupdate 1 if the submission is downloaded as part of a user gallery/scraps else 0, if omitted it defaults to entry or 0

falocalrepo database add-submission ./submission/metadata.json \
    file=./submission/submission.pdf thumb=./submission/thumbnail.jpg

• add-journal <json> Add or replace a journal entry into the database using metadata from a JSON file. If the journal already exists in the database, fields may be omitted from the JSON, except for the ID. Omitted fields will not be replaced in the database and will remain as they are. The following fields are supported:
  • id
  • title
  • author
  • date date in the format YYYY-MM-DD * 'content' the body of the journal
    The following fields are optional:
  • mentions list of mentioned users, if omitted it defaults to existing entry or mentions are extracted from the content

falocalrepo database add-journal ./journal.json"

• 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

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

falocalrepo database remove-journals 123456 135724 876512

• server [host=<host>] [port=<port>] [ssl-cert=<ssl-cert>] [ssl-key=<ssl-key>] [redirect-http=<redirect-port>] starts a server at <host>:<port> to navigate the database using falocalrepo-server. The <ssl-cert> and <ssl-key> allow serving with HTTPS.Defaults to 0.0.0.0:80. Setting <redirect-port> to a value activates HTTP to HTTPS redirection. Running the server does not occupy the database connection (it is only occupied when the server is actively searching the database), which allows running other database commands; download commands remain unavailable. To run falocalrepo together with the server, the server should be run directly with the falocalrepo-server command. See falocalrepo-server for more details on its usage.

falocalrepo database server host=127.0.0.1 port=5000

• merge <path> [<table1>.<param1>=<value1> ... <tableN>.<paramN>=<valueN>] Merge selected entries from a second database to the main database (the one opened with the program). To select entries, use the same parameters as the search commands precede by a table name. Search parameters can be passed multiple times to act as OR values. All columns of the entries table are supported. Parameters can be lowercase. If no parameters are passed then all the database entries are copied. If submissions entries are selected, their files are copied to the files' folder of the main database.

falocalrepo database merge ~/Documents/FA.backup/A/FA.db users.username=a% \
    submissions.author=a% journals.author=a%

falocalrepo database merge ~/Documents/FA2020/FA.db submissions.date=2020-% \
    journals.date=2020-%

falocalrepo database merge ~/Documents/FA.backup/FA.db

• copy <path> [<table1>.<param1>=<value1> ... <tableN>.<paramN>=<valueN>] Copy selected entries to a new or existing database. To select entries, use the same parameters as the search commands precede by a table name. Search parameters can be passed multiple times to act as OR values. All columns of the entries table are supported. Parameters can be lowercase. If no parameters are passed then all the database entries are copied. If submissions entries are selected, their files are copied to the files' folder of the target database.

falocalrepo database copy ~/Documents/FA.backup/A/FA.db users.username=a% \
    submissions.author=a% journals.author=a%

falocalrepo database copy ~/Documents/FA2020/FA.db submissions.date=2020-% \
    journals.date=2020-%

falocalrepo database copy ~/Documents/FA.backup/FA.db

• clean clean the database using the SQLite VACUUM function. Requires no arguments.
• upgrade upgrade the database to the latest version

Database

To store the metadata of the downloaded submissions, journals, 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 four tables: SETTINGS, USERS, SUBMISSIONS and JOURNALS.

How Lists Are Stored
Some fields in the database table contain lists of items. These are stored as strings, with each item surrounded by bars (|). This allows to properly separate and search individual items regardless of their position in the list.
|item1||item2|

Settings

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

• HISTORY list of executed commands in the format [[<time1>, "<command1>"], ..., [<timeN>, "<commandN>"]] (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, sorted and bar-separated

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
• DATE upload date in ISO format YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM
• DESCRIPTION description in html format
• TAGS bar-separated tags
• CATEGORY
• SPECIES
• GENDER
• RATING
• TYPE image, text, music, or flash
• FILEURL 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 file and thumbnail download status: 00, 01, 10, 11. 1x if the file was downloaded 0x if not, x1 if thumbnail was downloaded, x0 if not
• FAVORITE a bar-separated list of users that have "faved" the submission
• MENTIONS a bar-separated list of users that are mentioned in the submission description as links
• FOLDER the folder of the submission (gallery or scraps)
• USERUPDATE whether the submission was added as a user update or favorite/single entry

Journals

The journals table contains the metadata of the journals downloaded by the program.

• ID the id of the journal
• AUTHOR the username of the author (uploader) in full format
• TITLE
• DATE upload date in ISO format YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM
• CONTENT content in html format
• MENTIONS a bar-separated list of users that are mentioned in the journal content as links
• USERUPDATE whether the journal was added as a user update or single entry

Submission Files

Submission files are saved in a tiered tree structure based on their submission ID. IDs are zero-padded to 10 digits and then broken up in 5 segments of 2 digits; each of these 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.

Upgrading Database

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 upgrades 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

For details on upgrades and changes between database versions, see falocalrepo-database.

Contributing

All 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 at FALocalRepo/tags 2.11.

Release binaries before and including 2.10.2 can be found in GitHub Releases.