Flex Day #3 - AO3 Ebook Helper

[flamebyrd]

I've been doing a lot of reading on my Kobo lately, so AO3's epub download feature is my favourite. In the shower this morning I thought, wouldn't it be great if I could just click a bookmarklet and it would queue up downloads of the epub versions of all stories in the series?

I encountered two problems with this:
1) For logical reasons, AO3's structure for the download URLs is a bit arcane. I had to grab a copy of the code from SVN and dig around until I figured out the format.
2) Prompting the browser to download multiple files is more difficult than you'd think (but, again, probably for logical reasons). I found a few solutions but they were all pretty dodgy.

Anyway, long story short, I sort of solved problem 1 but not problem 2.

http://random.fangirling.net/fun/ao3/downloader.html

This will provide download links for the ebook versions of all stories on an AO3 page (author's works, search, series, etc) in a little box that floats on the page after you click the bookmarklet.

It is undoubtedly very buggy.

Comments

[samjohnsson]

oooh, shiny! (where do they have code on a subversion?) fair warning: it looks really odd when using Reversi (white on white).

Have you thought about posting this at ao3some.dreamwidth.org?

[flamebyrd]

Ah! Hopefully I can get around that by just defining a text colour in the CSS. Thanks for letting me know! I've also noticed a bug when there are a lot of works on the page (it won't let you scroll down the list).

I got the code from Google Code, out of habit from back when I was a volunteer, but on further investigation I think it's on git now? *coughs* Anyway, it was good enough for my purposes.

I plan to post on ao3some once I've squashed a few of the bugs!

[samjohnsson]

in theory, there's a 20-count cap, due to the SQL code. and can you just find and use the foreground and background from the page skin? the work body is in a [div class="userstuff"], which might respect vision adjustments...

yeah, it moved to https://github.com/otwcode/otwarchive a while ago.

[flamebyrd]

That's a great idea - I just tried grabbing the background from userstuff, but of course it's set to 'transparent'. Will keep digging for a way to get the 'root' level background colour...

*nods* I think I was volunteering in 2009...? I've bookmarked the git link now.

[samjohnsson]

try .group - that gets the chapter header and the blurbs. otherwise the color is set on the BODY, which is unclassed.

[flamebyrd]

.group was also transparent, so I used body. Just have to hope all themes have a sensible background/text colour combination on the body tag, I suppose!

I updated the page with the new bookmarklet code. Still fiddling, though!

[samjohnsson]

most if not all of the public skins should be sensible - theoretically, they meet w3c accessibility standards. user skins, otoh, are anybody's guess.

good to know! ::runs off to swipe::

[(Anonymous)]

Hi. Just thought I'd let you know that your downloader is not working for any fic's at all on ao3 anymore, I and many of My friends when we try to download any fic keep getting a 500 eror message.

Which is a crying shame, as, for Me persenally, this is the best thing on the net, and something I used until My fingers were numb I loved it so much.

[flamebyrd]

Oh, thank you for letting me know! I'll work on a fix ASAP - how can I let you know once it's ready?

[(Anonymous)]

hello

i saw that you responded to the last person who told you something was up here so i thought i would let you know that the downloader is not working on my IE just google chrome.

was that intentional on your part or is it something on my end that is messing up.

sorry to bug you i just do not like chrome very much and would prefer not to have to use it if at all possible but i will if i have to as like the last person said on here your downloader is way fantastic.

[flamebyrd]

OK, I've tweaked the script a bit and it now works in my IE10 - please reinstall the bookmarklet from http://random.fangirling.net/fun/ao3/downloader.html and try again!

[(Anonymous)]

thank's so much works great now. :) :)

sorry it took me so long to reply my internet connection has been on the fritz lately.

was curious about something though, another change i have noticed.

it used to be that the clicked links changed colour ans then stayed that colour all the way until you shut down or restarted your computer.

which was really helpful, as it stopped me from downloading the same fic a hundred different times in the same fandom with different searches, and eating up space.

but, now, the link will change colour for a little while, on ie, then as soon as your click to another page and come back the colour change is gone and you can tell which links you have clicked on , and in google chrome the colour does not change at all.

is that something you changed on purpose, a problem with ao3 again, or, just my comp.

would just like to know, as my comp can play up sometimes and want to know if more problems are happening to it.

sorry to keep bothering you like this, am just curious, is all. and worried my comp might to be replaced if this is on my end.

[flamebyrd]

Hmm, I don't override the link styles at all, it comes directly from AO3. And the visited link colour change is working for me. Are you running your browser in private mode or some other method to prevent it from storing your page visit history?

I don't use IE myself, so I can't say I've seen this myself. The visited links are still showing in the correct colour for me on AO3.

Sorry I can't be of more help!