DW German Audio Downloader

This is a supplementary program to help you in your German language studies. It is to be used with the (excellent) Deutsche Welle free German Language Learning resources that are found at https://learngerman.dw.com/en/overview

It has been tested with the Nico's Weg course. It works by being fed the URL of a vocabulary list (that is provided at the end of a section) or a whole course list (eg. course for A1) and provides you with options to download the pronunciation files (which are clear, concise and presented in a regular pattern throughout the course). The pronunciation files can then be used with a supplementary learning aid, such as the creation of personal flash cards (using a free program such as Anki).

(This script came about because after each chapter I found myself digging through the code so I could get the pronunciation files that were used to teach new words and to add them to my personal German flashcards. This script just saves a bit of time.)

Changelog

V0.2c:

Changed all filepaths to use os.path

V0.2b:

Replaced invalid Window filename chars with valid alternatives

V0.2a:

Updated for DW page changes (course list)

V0.2:

Added recursive downloading from course list page
Added more word cleanups (for irregular cases)
Added file check (if it already exists, skip download)
Added output folder

Requirements

This script uses the following libraries:

BeautifulSoup (for webscraping)
requests (for GET requests)

$ sudo pip install beautifulsoup4 requests

It has been tested on Linux (should work on Windows / Mac if the requirements are met), with the A1 Nico's Weg course (should work with other levels if the files are presented the same way).

Usage

The script itself is very simple, therefore its usage should be very simple!

$ python dw_downloader.py --help
usage: dw_downloader.py [-h] [-l | -d | -w WORD | -a] [-r] [-o OUTPUT] URL

An audio file downloader for the DW Nico's Weg German Learning course

positional arguments:
  URL                           URL of a vocabulary page from
                                https://learngerman.dw.com (Nico's Weg)

optional arguments:     
  -h,           --help          show this help message and exit
  -l,           --list          List all available words with audio files from the
                                given URL
  -d,           --detail        Detailed List. Like --list but adds complete text as
                                well (plural and article)
  -w WORD,      --word WORD     Download the audio file of the specified word only
  -a,           --all           Download all audio files from the vocabulary list
  -r,           --recursive     Provide the course page (eg A1) and it will
                                recursively download all audio of included lessons
  -o OUTPUT,    --output OUTPUT
                                Output folder for audio files. If not set, they are
                                downloaded to the current directory.

Examples

List all words

$ python dw_downloader.py https://learngerman.dw.com/en/wem-geh%C3%B6rt-das/l-37372077/lv -l
Ordner
ein
eine
Bestellung
Jahr  
Wort
lernen  
lesen 
Text  
üben 
Pause

List all words (detailed)

$ python dw_downloader.py https://learngerman.dw.com/en/wem-geh%C3%B6rt-das/l-37372077/lv -d  
Ordner      Ordner, - (m.)  
ein         ein  
eine        eine  
Bestellung  Bestellung, -en (f.)  
Jahr        Jahr, -e (n.)  
Wort        Wort, Wörter (n.)  
lernen      (etwas) lernen  
lesen       (etwas) lesen  
Text        Text, -e (m.)  
üben        (etwas) üben  
Pause       Pause, -n (f.)

Download a specific word

$ python dw_downloader.py https://learngerman.dw.com/en/wem-geh%C3%B6rt-d  
as/l-37372077/lv -w Wort 
Downloaded: Wort 

$ python dw_downloader.py https://learngerman.dw.com/en/wem-geh%C3%B6rt-d  
as/l-37372077/lv -w Text 
Downloaded: Text

Download all words

$ python dw_downloader.py https://learngerman.dw.com/en/wem-geh%C3%B6rt-d  
as/l-37372077/lv -a  
Downloaded: Ordner  
Downloaded: ein  
Downloaded: eine  
Downloaded: Bestellung  
Downloaded: Jahr  
Downloaded: Wort  
Downloaded: lernen  
Downloaded: lesen  
Downloaded: Text  
Downloaded: üben  
Downloaded: Pause

Recursive

All recursive downloads can use the existing switches (eg. --list and --detail)

Download all audio files from a whole course list (for eg. A1 course) recursively. To specified output folder

$ python dw_downloader.py https://learngerman.dw.com/en/beginners/c-36519789 -ra -o audio_files
1. Section: Welcome!                            ####################
        Greetings                               --------------------
https://learngerman.dw.com/en/hallo/l-37250531/lv
Downloaded: Wie geht es dir?
Downloaded: Wie geht es Ihnen?
Downloaded: Es geht mir gut
Downloaded: sehr gut
Downloaded: super
Downloaded: gut
Downloaded: nicht
Downloaded: danke
Downloaded: Und Ihnen?
Downloaded: auch
Downloaded: Und dir?
Downloaded: Herr
Downloaded: Frau
Downloaded: oder

Hope this script proves useful to somebody else!

Happy (German) Language Learning!

Licenced under the GPL v3

tpotie / DW_Audio_Downloader