Download each and every xkcd comic uploaded! Like ever!

If you have found my little bits of software of any use to you, you can help me pay my internet bills :)

Some of my projects are also on Gratipay

1   Features

• Can download all the xkcd's uploaded till date(1603 as I am writing this!).
• Download individual xkcd's and store them
• Download ranges of xkcd's and store them
• Download the latest issue xkcd
• Download the meta text inside each xkcd and store it
• No duplicacy in your XKCD database.
• Stores each xkcd in a separate file named as the title of the xkcd at your home directory
• Writes a description.txt for each xkcd. Storing meta-data like
  • date-publised
  • url value
  • a small description of that xkcd
  • The alt text on the comic
• written in uncomplicated python.

2   Demo

Usage

Each Comic is stored in it's own individual folder with a description.txt placed in it. It contains meta-data like - img-link - title - date-published - alt

Here's a little example for the same

xkcd_archive Structure

3   Usage

When running for the first time, do a xkcd-dl --update-db

$ xkcd-dl --update-db
XKCD link database updated
Stored it in 'xkcd_dict.json'. You can start downloading your XKCD's!
Run 'xkcd-dl --help' for more options
$

3.1   --help

$ xkcd-dl --help
usage: xkcd-dl [-h] [-u] [-l] [-d XKCD_NUM | -a]
               [-r [DOWNLOAD_RANGE [DOWNLOAD_RANGE ...]]] [-v] [-P PATH]
               [-s XKCD_NUM]

Run `xkcd-dl --update-db` if running for the first time.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -u, --update-db       Update the database
  -l, --download-latest
                        Download most recent comic
  -d XKCD_NUM, --download XKCD_NUM
                        Download specified comic by number
  -a, --download-all    Download all comics
  -r [DOWNLOAD_RANGE [DOWNLOAD_RANGE ...]], --download-range [DOWNLOAD_RANGE [DOWNLOAD_RANGE ...]]
                        Download specified range
  -v, --version         show program's version number and exit
  -P PATH, --path PATH  set path
  -s XKCD_NUM, --show XKCD_NUM
                        Show specified comic by number

3.2   --download-latest

This downloads the last uploaded xkcd comic and stores under the home directory of the user with a brief description

$ xkcd-dl --download-latest
Downloading xkcd from 'http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/flashlights.png' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd_archive/1603'
$

If it has been downloaded, will not do anything

This command will work even if you have not run --update-db yet.

3.3   --download=XKCDNUMBER

Downloads the particular XKCDNUMBER(given that it exists and has not been downloaded already) and stores it in the home directory

$ xkcd-dl --download=143
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/143/' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd_archive/143'
$ xkcd-dl --download=1603
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/1603/' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd_archive/1603'
xkcd  number '1603' has already been downloaded!
$

3.4   --download-range <START> <END>

Will take two number parameters and download all the xkcd's between the two, inclusive.

$ xkcd-dl --download-range 32 36
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/32/' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd_archive/32'
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/33/' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd_archive/33'
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/34/' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd_archive/34'
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/35/' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd_archive/35'
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/36/' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd_archive/36'

3.5   --download-all

As the name suggests, will download all the xkcd's uploaded till date and store them under the home directory of the user.

$ xkcd-dl --download-all
Downloading all xkcd's Till date!!
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/1466' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd_archive/1466'
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/381' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd_archive/381'
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/198' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd_archive/198'
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/512' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd_archive/512'
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/842' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd_archive/842'
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/920' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd_archive/920'
....
....

3.6   --path=PATH

To use a custom directory to store your xkcd_archive, you can append --path=./any/path/here to the end of any download method. Absolute and relative paths work, but the directory must already exist.

$ xkcd-dl --download=3 --path=comic
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/3/' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/comic/xkcd_archive/3'
$ xkcd-dl --download-range 54 56 --path=/home/tasdik/xkcd
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/54/' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd/xkcd_archive/54'
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/55/' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd/xkcd_archive/55'
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/56/' and storing it under '/home/tasdik/xkcd/xkcd_archive/56'

3.7   --show XKCD_NUM

Opens the specified comic. Downloads it, if not downloaded already. Prints the alt text and metadata to stdout.

$ xkcd-dl --show 32
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/32/' and storing it under '/home/bk/Documents/xkcd-dl/xkcd_dl/xkcd_archive/32'
title : Pillar
date-publised: 2006-1-1
url: http://xkcd.com/32/
alt: A comic by my brother Doug, redrawn and rewritten by me

$ xkcd-dl -s 1000
Downloading xkcd from 'http://xkcd.com/1000/' and storing it under '/home/bk/Documents/xkcd-dl/xkcd_dl/xkcd_archive/1000'
xkcd  number '1000' has already been downloaded!
title : 1000 Comics
date-publised: 2012-1-6
url: http://xkcd.com/1000/
alt: Thank you for making me feel less alone.

4   Installation

4.1   Option 1: installing through pip (Suggested way)

pypi package link

$ pip3 install xkcd-dl

If you are behind a proxy

$ pip3 --proxy [username:password@]domain_name:port install xkcd-dl

Note: If you get command not found then $ sudo apt-get install python3-pip should fix that

4.2   Option 2: installing from source

$ git clone https://github.com/prodicus/xkcd-dl.git
$ cd xkcd-dl/
$ pip3 install -r requirements.txt
$ python3 setup.py install

4.3   Upgrading

$ pip3 install -U xkcd-dl

4.4   Uninstalling

$ pip3 uninstall xkcd-dl

4.5   For Arch distributions

Here is the AUR link for you

• Arch package

5   Contributing

I hacked this up in one night, so its a little messy up there. Feel free to contribute.

1. Fork it.
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-awesome-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Added <xyz> feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-awesome-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request

5.1   Contributors

Big shout out to

• Ian C for fixing issue #2 which stopped the download if a title of a comic had a special character in it and BlitzKraft for pointing it out.
• BlitzKraft for adding the feature to download the alt-text from the the xkcd and major clean ups!
• Braden Best for pointing out the issues when installing from source apart from his valuable input.

5.2   To-do

• [x] add xkcd-dl --download-latest
• [x] add xkcd-dl --download=XKCDNUMBER
• [x] add xkcd-dl --download-all
• [x] add xkcd-dl download-range <START> <END>
• [x] add path setting with [--path=/path/to/directory] option
• [x] add exclude list to easily recognize and ignore dynamic comics i.e. comics without a default image.
• [x] Remove redundant code in download_xkcd_number(), download_latest() and download_all() (Refactoring!!)
• [x] Adding support to open a particular xkcd at the CLI itself. Implemented using xdg-open. Opens using your default image viewer.

5.3   Known Issues

• There have been issues when installed from source if you are using python 2.* as discussed in #5. So using python3.* is suggested.
• If you get command not found when installing, it may mean that you don't have pip3 installed. $ sudo apt-get install python3-pip should fix that. To check your version of pip
• Dynamic comics have to be added manually using the excludeList

$ pip3 --version
pip 1.5.6 from /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages (python 3.4)
$

5.4   Bugs

Please report the bugs at the issue tracker

OR

You can tweet me at @tasdikrahman if you can't get it to work. In fact, you should tweet me anyway.

6   Changelog

• 0.1.2:

  bug: fixed relative import error in setup.py added support for gif files when renaming downloaded image (#38)

7   Motivation

xkcd-dl is inspired by an awesome package called youtube-dl written by Daniel Bolton (Much respect!)

How about you get to download all of the xkcd which have been uploaded till date? This does just that!

Now I don't know about you, but I just love reading xkcd's! Had a boring Sunday night looming over, thought why not create something like youtube-dl but for downloading xkcd's!

And hence xkcd-dl

Cheers to a crazy night!

8   Legal stuff

Built with ♥ by Tasdik Rahman (@tasdikrahman) and others released under MIT License

You can find a copy of the License at http://prodicus.mit-license.org/