4Chan Archiver

Author:	Aaron DeVore
Contact:	aaron.devore@gmail.com

Archive images and post information from a 4chan thread.

Dependencies

• Python 3.1+
• BeautifulSoup 4.x
• Jinja2 (optional, for HTML output)
• Linux (not tested on Windows or Mac)

Warning

4chan has some nasty and/or illegal images. All images in a thread will be downloaded! Images from ads are not downloaded. Author(s) shall not be liable for any legal action result from use of this software. If you are unsure if a thread will contain illegal images, use tmpfs. Keep that stuff off your computer.

Copying

See LICENSE.txt.

Archiving

./archive.py [options] <board><thread> <destination>

board: Board (as in b)

thread: Thread ID

destination: Archive directory

Options

-h, --help	show this help message and exit
-b BOARD, --board=BOARD
	board name
-o, --overwrite-images
	Overwrite non-empty images
-u, --update	update the thread
-p PAUSEUPDATE, --pause-update=PAUSEUPDATE
	Wait time between thread updates
--pause-image=PAUSE_IMAGE
	Wait time between image downloads

-b <board> or --board <board>: Board to use (default: b)

-o or --overwrite-images: Always download images instead of skipping already downloaded images

Querying

./query.py [options] <archive>

Options

-h, --help	show this help message and exit
--author AUTHOR
	Exact match author
--author-re AUTHOR_RE
	Regexp match author
--text TEXT	Exact match message body
--text-re TEXT_RE
	Regexp match message body
--id ID, -i ID	Message id (repeatable)
--ids IDS	Comma separated id list
--images	Match only posts with images
--no-images	Match only posts without images
--green-text	Match only posts with green text
--no-green-text
	Match only posts without green text
--out OUT, -o OUT
	Output file
--htmldir HTMLDIR
	Write a full HTML directory including images
--format FORMAT
	Output format (html|json|plaintext)

Using --format html only outputs an HTML file. Use --htmldir to get a directory with all files properly in place.

Archive Layout

<destination>
--<board>-<thread>/
----images/: Downloaded images
----thread.js: JSON file

JSON format

Format for board-thread/thread.js file:

{
  "id": <thread ID>,
  "board": <board name>
  "mtime": <modified time using int(time.time())>
  "posts": [
      {
          "image": {
              "original": The original name of the uploaded file
              "name": File name of the image as written to disk
          }
          "utc": Time in seconds from the epoch
          "id": post ID,
          "text": Text of the post (raw HTML),
          "author": Author name (sometimes raw HTML)
      },
      ...
  ]
}