##Graphical Version Released

Bamboodl now has a basic GUI using PyQT5. To use it, prepare its dependencies and then visit its tutorial page.

##Warning for Fedora users

The PyQT5 package in the repos is only built against Python 2, and not Python3. Fedora 22 will include Python 3 as the default, so this only affects Fedora 21 and earlier releases. This may be an issue for other distributions as well, so be warned, you may have a few extra steps in your setup. Most distributions are in the process of switching to Python 3 as the default Python, so investigate your distro to see what the case is for you.

#Bamboodl - The Culture Archiver

This is Bamboodl, aka Bamboo Downloader, a lightweight tool for archiving 8chan/4chan threads. You give it thread links, and it downloads them. Run Bamboodl again to fetch updates since the last time it was run.

Bamboodl will eventually be compatible with Tumblr, Newgrounds, Deviantart, PHPBB threads, and many more sites, and have many more features, as I have time to implement them. Some sites (like Newgrounds) already work in my internal build, but the code is lousy, and needs cleanup before public release.

If you have questions about Bamboodl that aren't answered on this page, check this faq for more information.

If you have questions about the future of Bamboodl, please read the roadmap page.

Alternatively, if you would like an archiver for 4chan with more features than Bamboodl has presently, bibanon's is the best I know of. It's capable of polling a thread continuously (one at a time per-instance) until it 404's, and downloading only thumbnails. Bamboodl cannot yet do this, but it's under consideration.

#Requirements

Bamboodl in the console requires:

• Python 3.4+

• Beautiful Soup 4

The graphical version of Bamboodl additionally requires:

• PyQT5

#Running

• python3 bamboodl.py for the console version

• python3 bamboogui.py for the graphical version

#The Basics

Bamboodl:

• Loads new URLs from ~/_python/bamboodl/new.txt

• Stores all URLs and their metadata in a json file, located at ~/_python/bamboodl/subscribed.json

• Records when a URL was last accessed, when it was last changed, how long to wait before it should check that URL again, and more

• Downloads all media in a thread, and does not overwrite files that have already been downloaded, saving you bandwidth

• Keeps records of URLs that are unaccessible/404'd, so if your Internet connection drops mid-download, you can reprocess_the_dead() and retry downloading them

• Uses 4chan's and 8chan's JSON interface, to put less strain on their networks and run faster

Before a URL ends up in subscribed.json, you must either put it in new.txt or in the URL Register field in the graphical version and register it. Then, run the console version (bamboodl.py) or press 'Normal Download' in the graphical version, and it adds them to subscribed.json, which is your 'subscribed threads' list. It then downloads the threads' JSON, grabs all the media (images, webms, pdfs, etc), and updates the records in subscribed.json. 8chan and 4chan threads are currently supported.

Bamboodl knows better than to check every thread you're subscribed to every time you run it. Bamboodl records the last time each URL was checked, the last time a post/update was made, and the minimum time to wait until Bamboodl checks that URL again. Every time Bamboodl checks that URL, and there hasn't been an update, Bamboodl increases the amount of time it'll wait until it checks again. If there has been an update, it'll reset the wait time to the minimum amount. These wait times are currently per-domain, and you can check the times in 'bamboovar.py'.

Bamboodl has a function called reprocess_the_dead(). If your Internet connection fizzled out while Bamboodl was running, don't worry, just open bamboodl.py, and uncomment that line in the bamboodl_run() block (remove the # at the beginning of the line). Then, just run Bamboodl, and it'll recheck all the URLs flagged as dead. Note: Over time the number of dead URLs can become quite large, and you don't want to needlessly recheck a bunch of genuinely 404'd threads. I will add functionality later for periodically moving these genuinely dead links into a separate file, as a manual command and to be done automatically after several successful runs with no 404'd threads.

#Confused?

If there's anything on this page you don't understand, visit the wiki for some clarification.

If you have more technical questions about Bamboodl, check the wiki instead.