fiction-dl 1.6.0

A fiction downloader, capable of retrieving works of fiction from the net and saving them in afew common file formats.

fiction-dl (1.6.0)

fiction-dl is a command-line utility made for downloading works of fiction from the web, capable of auto-formatting and saving them in a few common file formats. It requires a Python interpreter installed, version 3.8 or higher.

The application supports more than a dozen websites, generates HTML, EPUB, MOBI, ODT and PDF output files, applies typographic corrections to the extracted content and is able to embed downloaded images within it.

✿ 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).

Category	Site	Authentication support	Channel support
fanfiction	Archive of Our Own	✗ no	✓ yes [1]
fanfiction	FanFiction.net	✗ no	✓ yes
fanfiction	FicWad.com	✗ no	✓ yes
fanfiction	SpaceBattles.com	✓ yes	✗ no
fanfiction	SufficientVelocity.com	✓ yes	✗ no
fanfiction	AlternateHistory.com	✓ yes	✗ no
fanfiction	QuestionableQuesting.com	✗ no	✗ no
fanfiction	HarryPotterFanFiction.com	✗ no	✗ no
original fiction	Fiction Press	✗ no	✓ yes
original fiction	Reddit	✓ yes	✗ no
erotica	AdultFanFiction	✗ no	✗ no
erotica	Literotica	✗ no	✓ yes
erotica	Hentai Foundry	✗ no	✓ yes
erotica	NajlepszaErotyka.com.pl	✗ no	✗ no
erotica	Nifty.org	✗ no	✗ no

^{[1] fiction-dl is also capable of downloading whole collections and series.}

It is also capable of reading stories saved in text files. You can put the HTML-formatted story in a raw text file and use fiction-dl to translate it to some more civilized format.

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.

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:

fiction-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:

fiction-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:

fiction-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"