A simple Python wrapper for archive.org's "Save Page Now" capturing service
Installation
$ pipenv install savepagenow
Python Usage
Import it.
>>> import savepagenow
Capture a URL.
>>> (archive_url, captured) = savepagenow.capture("http://www.example.com/")
See where it's stored.
>>> print(archive_url)
https://web.archive.org/web/20161018203554/http://www.example.com/
If a URL has been recently cached, archive.org may return the URL to that page rather than conduct a new capture. When that happens, the capture
method will raise a CachedPage
exception.
This is likely happen if you request the same URL twice within a few seconds.
>>> savepagenow.capture("http://www.example.com/")
('https://web.archive.org/web/20161019062637/http://www.example.com/', True)
>>> savepagenow.capture("http://www.example.com/")
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
File "savepagenow/__init__.py", line 36, in capture
archive_url
savepagenow.exceptions.CachedPage: archive.org returned a cached version of this page: https://web.archive.org/web/20161019062637/http://www.example.com/
You can craft your code to catch that exception yourself, or use the built-in capture_or_cache
method, which will return the URL provided by archive.org along with a boolean indicating if it is a fresh capture (True) or from the cache (False).
>>> savepagenow.capture("http://www.example.com/", accept_cache=True)
('https://web.archive.org/web/20161019062832/http://www.example.com/', True)
>>> savepagenow.capture_or_cache("http://www.example.com/", accept_cache=True)
('https://web.archive.org/web/20161019062832/http://www.example.com/', False)
Command-line usage
The Python library is also installed as a command-line interface. You can run it from your terminal like so:
$ savepagenow http://www.example.com/
The command has the same options as the Python API, which you can learn about from its help output.
$ savepagenow --help
Usage: savepagenow [OPTIONS] URL
Archives the provided URL using the archive.org Wayback Machine.
Raises a CachedPage exception if archive.org declines to conduct a new
capture and returns a previous snapshot instead.
Options:
-ua, --user-agent TEXT User-Agent header for the web request
-c, --accept-cache Accept and return cached URL
--help Show this message and exit.
Customizing the user agent
In an effort to be transparent and polite to the Internet Archive, all requests made by savepagenow carry a custom user agent that identifies itself as "savepagenow (https://github.com/pastpages/savepagenow)"
.
You can further customize this setting by using the optional arguments to our API.
Here's how to do it in Python:
>>> savepagenow.capture("http://www.example.com/", user_agent="my user agent here")
And here's how to do it from the command line:
$ savepagenow http://www.example.com/ --user-agent "my user agent here"