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 = 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/'
>>> 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_or_cache("http://www.example.com/")
('https://web.archive.org/web/20161019062832/http://www.example.com/', True)
>>> savepagenow.capture_or_cache("http://www.example.com/")
('https://web.archive.org/web/20161019062832/http://www.example.com/', False)

There's no accounting for taste but you could craft a line to handle that command like so:

>>> url, captured = savepagenow.capture_or_cache("http://www.example.com/")

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"

Developing the CLI

The command-line interface is implemented using Click and setuptools. To install it locally for development inside your virtual environment, run the following installation command, as [prescribed by the Click documentation](https://click.palletsprojects.com/en/7.x/setuptools/#setuptools-integration).

$ pip install --editable .