fiction-dl 1.8.3

A content downloader, capable of retrieving works of (fan)fiction from the web and saving them in a few common file formats.

fiction-dl (1.8.3)

fiction-dl is a command-line utility designed to download works of (fan)fiction from the web and save them in a few portable file formats. It requires a Python interpreter installed, version 3.8 or higher.

The application currently supports almost two dozen websites and six output file formats; the latter being: HTML, ODT, PDF, EPUB and MOBI. It's able to download images found in story content, as well as capable of applying basic typographic corrections to the content itself.

✿ Table of Contents

1. Features.
2. Installation.
3. Usage.
4. License.
5. Technical.

✿ Features

Downloading stories

fiction-dl can download stories from a multitude of sites - in some cases, it also supports downloading all stories published by any specific user (which is called downloading stories from a channel).

In a select few sites, it allows you to log-in to the site using the command-line; this functionality allows the user to access subforums closed to guest viewers, like the Fandom category on AlternateHistory.com, or quarantined subreddits on Reddit.

#	Category	Site	Authentication support	Channel support
1	fanfiction	Archive of Our Own	✓ yes	✓ yes [1]
2	fanfiction	FanFiction.net	✗ no	✓ yes [2]
3	fanfiction	FicWad.com	✗ no	✓ yes
4	fanfiction	SpaceBattles.com	✓ yes	✗ no
5	fanfiction	SufficientVelocity.com	✓ yes	✗ no
6	fanfiction	AlternateHistory.com	✓ yes	✗ no
7	fanfiction	QuestionableQuesting.com	✗ no	✗ no
8	fanfiction	HarryPotterFanFiction.com	✗ no	✓ yes
9	fanfiction	WhoFic.com	✗ no	✓ yes [3]
10	fanfiction	SamAndJack.net	✗ no	✓ yes
11	fanfiction	Ralst.com	✗ no	✗ no
12	original fiction	Fiction Press	✗ no	✓ yes
13	original fiction	Reddit	✓ yes	✗ no
14	original fiction	Quotev	✗ no	✗ no
15	original fiction	Wuxiaworld	✗ no	✗ no
16	erotica	AdultFanFiction	✗ no	✓ yes
17	erotica	Literotica	✗ no	✓ yes
18	erotica	Hentai Foundry	✗ no	✓ yes
19	erotica	NajlepszaErotyka.com.pl	✗ no	✗ no
20	erotica	Nifty.org	✗ no	✗ no
21	erotica	asstr.org/~Kristen	✗ no	✗ no

• ^{[1] fiction-dl is also capable of downloading whole collections and series.}
• ^{[2] The application supports also downloading entire collections.}
• ^{[3] The application supports downloading whole series as well.}

It is also possible to process stories stored in local files. You can put the HTML-formatted story in a raw text file and use fiction-dl to reformat it in all of its output file formats.

Formatting stories

Downloaded stories are auto-formatted and saved in a few file formats:

File Format	Requirements
HTML (.html)	None.
EPUB (.epub)	None.
MOBI (.mobi)	Calibre installed on the machine.
OpenDocument (.odt)	None.
Portable Document Format (.pdf)	LibreOffice installed on the machine.

Embedding images

The application can download images found in story content and embed them in output files.

Typographic corrections

fiction-dl automatically applies basic typographic corrections to the content of downloaded stories. For example:

Source Text	Corrected Text
Lorem ipsum... dolor.	Lorem ipsum… dolor.
Lorem ipsum...dolor.	Lorem ipsum… dolor.
Lorem ipsum...... dolor.	Lorem ipsum… dolor.
Lorem ipsum , dolor.	Lorem ipsum, dolor.
Lorem ipsum????? Dolor.	Lorem ipsum? Dolor.
Lorem ipsum - dolor.	Lorem ipsum — dolor.

Packing stories

If you're downloading a lot of short stories, you can pack them into a single file, using the "-pack" command line option. This way you're adding only a single item to your Kindle book list, instead of many.

✿ Installation

You can install fiction-dl using pip:

python3 -m pip install --upgrade fiction-dl

(If the package's already installed, this command will also update it.)

If you're running a Debian-derived Linux distribution, you might also need to install the following packages:

apt-get install libgl1-mesa-glx libglib2.0-0 libmupdf-dev

(fiction-dl uses OpenCV for processing downloaded images, which requires them to be installed. PyMuPDF requires libmupdf-dev when it's being built from the source.)

✿ Usage

To download a story from a URL, simply type:

f-dl URL

In order to download multiple stories, create a text file and place the URLs in it, each one in a separate line. Then type:

f-dl YourFilesName

Options

Option	Result
-h (--help)	shows the overview of command-line options
-a	authenticates the user to supported sites using interactive mode
-c	clears the cache before launching the application
-pack	packs all downloaded stories inside one file (of each type)
-v	enables the (more) verbose mode
-f	overwrites output files (in case they already exist)
-d	enables debug mode (saves some data useful for debugging)
-no-images	disables downloading images found in story content
-persistent-cache	preserves the cache after the application quits
-lo	used to specify the path to the LibreOffice executable (soffice.exe)
-o	used to specify the output directory path

Text File Extractor

Create a text file meant to contain the story. In its first lines type:

LOCAL TEXT STORY
*URL*
*The Title of the Story*
*The Author*
*The One-Line Summary*

Follow it by the story's content, wrapped in HTML tags. Then call:

f-dl FilePath.txt

You can insert chapter-breaks in the story by typing "CHAPTER BREAK LINE" in an empty line.

✿ License

GNU GPL 3. The text of the license is provided in the LICENSE file.

✿ Technical

Changelogs

All the changelogs can be found in the Docs/Changelogs.md file.

Documentation

You can generate code documentation using Doxygen; the relevant configuration file is Docs/Docs.doxygen. Generated files will appear in the Docs/Code Documentation directory.

Tests

Launching the Integration Test can be done by entering the Tests directory and executing the following code:

python3 "Integration Test.py"