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.

• ^{[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:

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:

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

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"