Download Medisch Contact and convert to EPUB

A command line tool and lib to download Medisch Contact and convert to EPUB

Introduction

Medisch Contact is a Dutch magazine for medical doctors.

This package provides a Python libary and command line tool for convenient downloading of the online contents to EPUB files.

• Free software: MIT license

Installation

If you have Python on your system you can do the usual:

$ pip install medisch-contact-downloader

Quickstart

Command line usage examples

List all issues in the current year. For listing only, no authentication is required.

$ medisch-contact-downloader -l

List all issues in the years 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007, and 2008:

$ medisch-contact-downloader -l -y 2002 2004 2006-2008

Download the latest issue to the default download-directory. For downloading, a username and password is required for authentication.

$ medisch-contact-downloader -u username -p password -d

Download the issues with the IDs 2022-4 and 2022-5 to the ~/Downloads download-directory. An ID is composed of the year and number of the issue.

$ medisch-contact-downloader -u username -p password -d -i 2022-4 2022-5 -w ~/Downloads

Email the latest issue:

$ medisch-contact-downloader -e -u username -p password --smtp_host smtp.example.com --smtp_port 587 --smtp_username user@example.com --smtp_password <password> --sender user@example.com --recipient info@example.com

Show command line help::

$ medisch-contact-downloader -h

Configuration File

The configuration file config.ini can change the default values for command line options. It should be written using a standard INI style. The keys should be grouped into sections. For now, the name of the sections are ignored. The section name appears on a line by itself, in square brackets ([ and ]). Configuration files may include comments, prefixed by # or ;. Comments may appear on their own on an otherwise empty line, possibly indented.

Location

The config.ini configuration file should be put in the default config directory. This location is different on different operating systems. A custom configuration file can be provided with the --config argument.

• Linux: $HOME/.config/medisch-contact-downloader/config.ini, which respects the XDG_CONFIG_HOME environment variable.

• MacOS: $HOME/Library/Application Support/medisch-contact-downloader/config.ini

• Windows: %APPDATA%\medisch-contact-downloader\config.ini

Precedence / Override order

Command line options override the values in a configuration file.

Example config.ini

; This is a comment
# This is another comment
[settings]  ; a section marker is required in INI files
verbose = True
download_dir = /home/folkert/Downloads
username = <username>  ; username for authentication with https://www.medischcontact.nl/
password = <password>  ; password
smtp_host = smtp.example.com  ; host name or ip address of the SMTP server
smtp_port = 587  ; port of the SMTP server
smtp_username = user@example.com  ; accountname, username, or email address of your email account for authentication
smtp_password = <password>  ; password of your email account for authentication.
sender = user@example.com
recipient = info@example.com

Download

When an issue is downloaded, it is copied to the default download directory. This location is different on different operating systems. A custom download directory can be provided with the --download_dir argument.

Location

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/medisch-contact-downloader

• Windows: %APPDATA%\medisch-contact-downloader

• Linux (and other Unices): ~/.local/share/medisch-contact-downloader

Email

You can send an automated email message with the downloaded Epub as an attachment, for example to send it to your Kindle. To use this feature, the --email argument should be provided to the command line tool, along with the required arguments: --smtp_host, --smtp_port, --smtp_username, --smtp_password, --sender, and --recipient. This option presumes the --download argument.

Please note that if you use 2-step-verification in a Gmail-account, you might need an App Password (see https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185833)

Changelog

[0.2.5] - 2023-03-25

• Fix changed datestring on website
• Show usage info when no arguments are given

[0.2.4] - 2022-08-01

• Fix handling of subject and body arguments

[0.2.3] - 2022-08-01

• Fix arguments
• Correct Windows default download directory in README

[0.2.2] - 2022-08-01

• Implement CSRF protection of changed login page

[0.2.1] - 2022-02-24

• Ensure unique filename by adding id

[0.2] - 2022-02-23

• Bugfixes

[0.1.0] - 2022-02-21

• First release on PyPI.

Author

• Folkert van der Beek - https://gitlab.com/fvdbeek