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Archive.org Scanned Book Downloader Bookmarklet

Archive.org Scanned Book Downloader Bookmarklet

A simple "1-click" javascript approach to downloading a scanned book from archive.org to read at your leisure on the device of your choosing w/out having to manually screenshot every pages of the book by hand. In short it's a glorified "Save Image As..." approach but consolidated down to "1 click". BTW there may be a much better option than this out there - I just built this as an autistic project to see if it would work.

Demo Video

Archive.org SBDL Demo

Obligatory Legal/Disclaimer:

By using this script you agree to delete all book files/images after your 1 hour or 14 days is up! I don't support using this script for any other use cases. After all, none of us have ever kept a library book past it's return date, right?

NOTES:

  • Scanned Books Only: This only works on "scanned" books where each page is an image file. This means A) you won't be able search the text of the book and B) the book file size will be tens of megabytes not kilobytes like an EPUB/etc. Given the above always try to find the book in text format first (epub, etc) before using this method.
  • Compatibility: As of 11/2021 I've tested this on a few books w/no problems so it seems pretty stable but if someone finds a book that doesn't work w/it LMK in comments. It's very possible (likely?) at some point archive.org will change something that either requires some adjustments to this script and/or makes this approach no longer possible. Feel free to recommend tweaks or fixes if anyone has any suggestions btw.
  • Borrowed and?: I've only tested this for "Borrowed" books but I suppose you could use on Free books too - although normally those already offer a PDF download so not really a reason to do that.
  • Support: This is just a basic javascript thing so there's no real danger here but I can't/don't provide any support if this doesn't work for you and/or your browser crashes while trying it.

Instructions

  1. Create a bookmarklet in your browser using the code below via https://mrcoles.com/bookmarklet/
  2. Go to archive.org and "Borrow" the book for 1 hour or 14 days (only tested with the 1 hour)
  3. Once the borrowed book page reloads click zoom icon to zoom into the 1st page of book at least 2 times (otherwise you'll get low-res version of book images)
  4. Write down or make a mental note of how many pages the book has
  5. Use browser's "Inspect Element" on first page of book to find the page image URL and right-click to "open link" in a new tab.
  6. Once on the new tab looking at the book's 1st page image, click the bookmarklet button made in step 1 and type in the number of pages the book has that you noted in step 4. Tip: Add 5-10 more pages than the book has just in case the covers/final pages of the book actually add up to a higher number.
  7. As soon as you click 'OK' after entering the page count watch for the browser's "Allow Multiple Downloads from this Site" type message in your browser and click 'Accept' or whatever. Otherwise the process will fail. Some browsers may not do this - so disregard if this isn't an issue w/your browser.
  8. Wait for the process to finish - a 300 page book takes around 3-5 minutes. Note: You can minimize the browser tab/window while the pages are downloading.
  9. Once all pages have been downloaded an "alert" message will popup when the pages have all been downloaded.
  10. At this point you'll have a bunch of book page images in your Downloads folder like mybookwhatever_000.jpg, mybookwhatever_001.jpg etc.
  11. If you want to make a PDF of the pages go to https://tools.pdf24.org/en/images-to-pdf and drag all these images into the upload area. When the images are uploading click the "A-Z sort" button at the bottom of the page to make sure the pages sort by filename.
  12. Click the "Create PDF" button when it's ready and download the PDF when it's done.
  13. Now you can enjoy reading the book at your leisure, wherever you want without having to wait for the annoying page load times of archive.org, etc!
function downloadFile(filePath){
    var link=document.createElement('a');
    link.href = filePath;
    link.download = filePath.substr(filePath.lastIndexOf('/') + 1);
    link.click();
}

function getNewURL(pageCount){
	if(pageCount == null) pageCount = 1;
	var url = document.location.href; 	
	var urlParts = url.split(".jp2");	
	var urlPrefixParts = urlParts[0].split("_");	
	var urlPageNumber = urlPrefixParts[urlPrefixParts.length-1];	
	var nextPageNumberString = String(parseInt(urlPageNumber)+pageCount).padStart(4,'0');  	
	var newURLPrefix = ''; 
	for(var p=0;p<urlPrefixParts.length-1;p++) newURLPrefix += urlPrefixParts[p] + '_';	
	var newURL = newURLPrefix + nextPageNumberString + '.jp2' + urlParts[1];	
	return newURL;
}

var confirm1 = confirm('Archive.org Scanned Book Downloader:\n\nReady Check: Are you on a window/tab viewing *just* the IMAGE of the 1st page of the book? If not cancel and run this when you are.');
if(!confirm1) return false;
var pageCount = prompt('Archive.org Scanned Book Downloader:\n\nHow many pages are in this book?');
var pageCounter = 0;
var pageInterval = null;
if(pageCount == null || pageCount == undefined || parseInt(pageCount) == NaN){
   console.log('no page count provided.. giving up.');
}else{
	pageInterval = window.setInterval(function(){	
		if(pageCounter > parseInt(pageCount)){
			window.clearInterval(pageInterval);
			pageInterval = null;			
			console.log('downloading done!..');			
			var pdfTime = confirm('All pages downloaded! (some files may still be downloading though)\n\nWould you like to go to a site to create a PDF with them now?');
			if(pdfTime){
				window.open('https://tools.pdf24.org/en/images-to-pdf','_blank');			
			}
		}else{
			var nextFile = getNewURL(pageCounter);
			downloadFile(nextFile);
			console.log('downloading next page! (' + nextFile + ')');
		}
		pageCounter += 1;
	},900);
}
@Connal2
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Connal2 commented Aug 26, 2024

Hi there,
thanks a bunch for this site here and the script.
Unfortunately, and even though I did everything as described, after some pages ending with ".jpg". all other following pictures are only 3.2 kb and ending with ".jp2....". And all are useless ie cannot be viewed. I am desperate.

All those years, I used "Chrome Cache View" and could just copy and paste all jpgs and merge them to one pdf, but now all I find there too are these useless ".jp2..." files.
Here is an example from an Agatha Christie book:

450frompaddingto0000agat_y2n8_0007.jpg (first few perfect)

then it changes to:

450frompaddingto0000agat_y2n8_0021.jp2&id=450frompaddingto0000agat_y2n8&scale=1&rotate=0

DarkJester89 [on Apr 24] seemed to experience the same problem. With pictures see above,

THANKS!

@DarkJester89
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As of today, I got this to work, bookmark a favorite, update the url with the copylink from the booklet maker. When looking for the first image of the book, click "inspect" and search "brpageimage" for the ia##### link. I initially went through the "page source" part looking for code and it didn't work. My book is currently downloading right now with this method.

@seamushl-IO
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This is legendary great work you are a god!

@yuhyuhyeah
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thanks so much this still works !!

@nenabunena
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Guys I give up, I've spent hours on this, my old method no longer works either, if anyone can figure out how to download this book, please help me! The new codes don't work for me either, it keeps downloading the book cover.

https://archive.org/details/prisonsecretsunt0000euge

@cemerson
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Author

cemerson commented Dec 2, 2024

Guys I give up, I've spent hours on this, my old method no longer works either, if anyone can figure out how to download this book, please help me! The new codes don't work for me either, it keeps downloading the book cover.

https://archive.org/details/prisonsecretsunt0000euge

Hey @nenabunena. Sorry you're having issues - what browser/OS are you using? I just tested your link in Brave using original steps above (in main post description) and all the pages started downloading normally.

@cemerson
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Author

cemerson commented Dec 2, 2024

Thanks @yuhyuhyeah / @seamushl-IO 🙏🏻 very glad to hear it's still helpful! :)

@nenabunena
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nenabunena commented Dec 2, 2024

Guys I give up, I've spent hours on this, my old method no longer works either, if anyone can figure out how to download this book, please help me! The new codes don't work for me either, it keeps downloading the book cover.
https://archive.org/details/prisonsecretsunt0000euge

Hey @nenabunena. Sorry you're having issues - what browser/OS are you using? I just tested your link in Brave using original steps above (in main post description) and all the pages started downloading normally.

I tried edge, chrome, and firefox. It used to work in the past but after a while it stopped working. Someone here said the problem is leaf and I needed to go to excel to fix leaf, but I didn't understand them tbh. I never heard of brave but I will check, can you share the link for the pages you have for this please? In case I can't get it to work?

Is this is the image url you used from inspect element?

https://archive.org/services/img/prisonsecretsunt0000euge/full/pct:200/0/default.jpg

I can't get it to work.

I keep getting undefined file whatever browser I use.

I just tried Brave and it blocks bookmarklet, not sure what I am doing wrong.

@nenabunena
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SORRY, I finally got it! When I click inspect element, it opens under the same window, not like before when it opened in a new tab. So I would click 'view page source' instead to open in a new window and that was a mistake! When I click inspect element, the image link is found under the highlighted block but you need to expand the tree to find it. Then zoom the book again, because it minimizes as soon as you open inspect element. Then you open the link in a new tab. Sorry guys, I'm just not very techy and simple things just don't come up to me.

But yes, it works!

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