PFERD

Programm zum Flotten, Einfachen Runterladen von Dateien

Other resources:

• Config file format
• Changelog
• Development Guide

Installation

Direct download

Binaries for Linux, Windows and Mac can be downloaded directly from the latest release.

With pip

Ensure you have at least Python 3.9 installed. Run the following command to install PFERD or upgrade it to the latest version:

$ pip install --upgrade git+https://github.com/Garmelon/PFERD@latest

The use of venv is recommended.

With package managers

Unofficial packages are available for:

• AUR
• brew
• conda-forge
• nixpkgs
• PyPi

See also PFERD's repology page.

Basic usage

PFERD can be run directly from the command line with no config file. Run pferd -h to get an overview of available commands and options. Run pferd <command> -h to see which options a command has.

For example, you can download your personal desktop from the KIT ILIAS like this:

$ pferd kit-ilias-web desktop <output_directory>

Also, you can download most ILIAS pages directly like this:

$ pferd kit-ilias-web <url> <output_directory>

You want to use antoher ILIAS instance? Read here!

However, the CLI only lets you download a single thing at a time, and the resulting command can grow long quite quickly. Because of this, PFERD can also be used with a config file.

To get started, just take a command you've been using and add --dump-config directly after pferd, like this:

$ pferd --dump-config kit-ilias-web <url> <output_directory>

This will make PFERD write its current configuration to its default config file path. You can then run pferd without a command and it will execute the config file. Alternatively, you can use --dump-config-to and specify a path yourself. Using --dump-config-to - will print the configuration to stdout instead of a file, which is a good way to see what is actually going on when using a CLI command.

Another good way to see what PFERD is doing is the --explain option. When enabled, PFERD explains in detail what it is doing and why. This can help with debugging your own config.

If you don't want to run all crawlers from your config file, you can specify the crawlers you want to run with --crawler or -C, like this:

$ pferd -C crawler1 -C crawler2

Advanced usage

PFERD supports lots of different options. For example, you can configure PFERD to use your system's keyring instead of prompting you for your username and password. PFERD also supports transformation rules that let you rename or exclude certain files.

For more details, see the comprehensive config format documentation.

Example

This example downloads a few courses from the KIT ILIAS with a common keyring authenticator. It reorganizes and ignores some files.

[DEFAULT]
# All paths will be relative to this.
# The crawler output directories will be <working_dir>/Foo and <working_dir>/Bar.
working_dir = ~/stud
# If files vanish from ILIAS the local files are not deleted, allowing us to
# take a look at them before deleting them ourselves.
on_conflict = no-delete

[auth:ilias]
type = keyring
username = foo

[crawl:Foo]
type = kit-ilias-web
auth = auth:ilias
# Crawl a course by its ID (found as `ref_id=ID` in the URL)
target = 1234567

# Plaintext files are easier to read by other tools
links = plaintext

transform =
  # Ignore unneeded folders
  Online-Tests --> !
  Vorlesungswerbung --> !

  # Rename folders
  Lehrbücher --> Vorlesung
  # Note the ">>" arrow head which lets us apply further rules to files moved to "Übung"
  Übungsunterlagen -->> Übung

  # Move exercises to own folder. Rename them to "Blatt-XX.pdf" to make them sort properly
  "Übung/(\d+). Übungsblatt.pdf" -re-> Blätter/Blatt-{i1:02}.pdf
  # Move solutions to own folder. Rename them to "Blatt-XX-Lösung.pdf" to make them sort properly
  "Übung/(\d+). Übungsblatt.*Musterlösung.pdf" -re-> Blätter/Blatt-{i1:02}-Lösung.pdf

  # The course has nested folders with the same name - flatten them
  "Übung/(.+?)/\\1" -re-> Übung/{g1}

[crawl:Bar]
type = kit-ilias-web
auth = auth:ilias
target = 1337420

Other ILIAS instances

PFERD was originally developed for the KIT ILIAS instance, so you might have to adapt some parts of the code for full compatibility with your instance.

To run PFERD against any instance using the integrated ILIAS authentication, simply add the --base-url and --client-id flags to the CLI command, e.g.

$ pferd ilias-web --base-url https://ilias.my-university.example --client-id My_University desktop <output_directory>

To use a config file for the given instance, just extend the example above as follows:

[DEFAULT]
base_url = https://ilias.my-university.example
client_id = My_University

[auth:ilias]
...

[crawl:foo]
...

Note that base_url and client_id can also be specified on a per-crawler level.

Example configuration

Inspired by this ILIAS downloader, the following configurations should work out of the box for the corresponding universities:

University	base_url	client_id
FH Aachen	https://www.ili.fh-aachen.de	elearning
Uni Koeln	https://www.ilias.uni-koeln.de/ilias	uk
Uni Konstanz	https://ilias.uni-konstanz.de	ILIASKONSTANZ
Uni Stuttgart	https://ilias3.uni-stuttgart.de	Uni_Stuttgart

My university isn't listed

No problem, your university might also just work fine. To retrieve the values required for your instance, navigate to the corresponding login page. You should be redirected to

{{ base_url }}/login.php?client_id={{ client_id }}&cmd=force_login&lang=

From this URL, you can simply extract your required values. Feel free to open a PR to add your configuration to the table above. This will help people find out if their ILIAS instance is supported too.