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https://github.com/charlesroelli/org-board

Org mode's web archiver.
https://github.com/charlesroelli/org-board

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Org mode's web archiver.

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README 

        
org-board

=========



Last updated:  Wed 30 May 2018 20:06:55 CEST



* Motivation



 org-board is a bookmarking and web archival system for Emacs Org

 mode, building on ideas from Pinboard .  It

 archives your bookmarks so that you can access them even when

 you're not online, or when the site hosting them goes down.

 `wget' is used as a backend for archival, so any of its options

 can be used directly from org-board.  This means you can download

 whole sites for archival with a couple of keystrokes, while

 keeping track of your archives from a simple Org file.



* Summary



 In org-board, a bookmark is represented by an Org heading of any

 level, with a `URL' property containing one or more URLs.  Once

 such a heading is created, a call to `org-board-archive' creates a

 unique ID and directory for the entry via `org-attach', archives

 the contents and requisites of the page(s) listed in the `URL'

 property using `wget', and saves them inside the entry's

 directory.  A link to the (timestamped) root archive folder is

 created in the property `ARCHIVED_AT'.  Multiple archives can be

 made for each entry.  Additional options to pass to `wget' can be

 specified via the property `WGET_OPTIONS'.  The variable

 `org-board-after-archive-functions' (defaulting to nil) holds a

 list of functions to run after each archival operation.



* User commands



 `org-board-archive' archives the current entry, creating a unique

   ID and directory via `org-attach' if necessary.



 `org-board-archive-dry-run' shows the `wget' invocation that will

   run for this entry in the echo area.



 `org-board-new' prompts for a URL to add to the current entry's

   properties, then archives the entry immediately.



 `org-board-delete-all' deletes all the archives for this entry by

   deleting the `org-attach' directory.



 `org-board-open' opens the bookmark at point in a browser.

   Default to the built-in browser, `eww', and with prefix, the

   native operating system browser.



 `org-board-diff' uses `zdiff' (if available) or `ediff' to

   recursively diff two archives of the same entry.



 `org-board-diff3' uses `ediff' to recursively diff three archives

   of the same entry.



 `org-board-cancel' cancels the current org-board archival process.



 `org-board-run-after-archive-function' prompts for a function and

   an archive in the current entry, and applies the function to the

   archive.



 These are all bound in the `org-board-keymap' variable (not bound

 to any key by default).



* Customizable options



 `org-board-wget-program' is the path to the wget program.



 `org-board-wget-switches' are the command line options to use with

 `wget'.  By default these are included as:



   "-e robots=off"      ignores robots.txt files.

   "--page-requisites"  downloads all page requisites (CSS, images).

   "--adjust-extension" add a ".html" extension where needed.

   "--convert-links"    convert external links to internal.



 `org-board-agent-header-alist' is an alist mapping agent names to

 their respective header/user-agent arguments.  Set a

 `WGET_OPTIONS' property to a key of this alist (say,

 `Mac-OS-10.8') and org-board will replace the key with its

 corresponding value before calling wget. This is useful for some

 sites that refuse to serve pages to `wget'.



 `org-board-wget-show-buffer' controls whether the archival process

 buffer is shown in a window (defaults to true).



 `org-board-log-wget-invocation' controls whether to log the

 archival process command in the root of the archival directory

 (defaults to true).



 `org-board-domain-regexp-alist' applies certain options when a

 domain matches a regular expression.  See the docstring for

 details.  As an example, this is used to make sure that `wget'

 does not send a User Agent string when archiving from Google

 Cache, which will not normally serve pages to it.



 `org-board-after-archive-functions' (default nil) holds a list of

 functions to run after an archival takes place.  This is intended

 for user extensions to `org-board'.  The functions receive three

 arguments: a list of URLs downloaded, the folder name where they

 were downloaded and the process filter event string (see the Elisp

 manual for details on the possible values of this string).  For an

 example use of `org-board-after-archive-functions', see the

 "Example usage" section below.



* Known limitations



 Options like "--header: 'Agent X" cannot be specified as

 properties, because the property API splits on spaces, and such an

 option has to be passed to `wget' as one argument.  To work around

 this, add these types of options to `org-board-agent-header-alist'

 instead, where the property API is not involved.



 At the moment, only one archive can be done at a time.



* Example usage



** Archiving



 I recently found a list of articles on linkers that I wanted to

 bookmark and keep locally for offline reading.  In a dedicated org

 file for bookmarks I created this entry:



 ** TODO Linkers (20-part series)

 :PROPERTIES:

 :URL:          http://a3f.at/lists/linkers

 :WGET_OPTIONS: --recursive -l 1 --span-hosts

 :END:



 Where the `URL' property is a page that already lists the URLs

 that I wanted to download.  I specified the recursive property for

 `wget' along with a depth of 1 ("-l 1") so that each linked page

 would be downloaded.  With point inside the entry, I run "M-x

 org-board-archive".  An `org-attach' directory is created and

 `wget' starts downloading the pages to it.  Afterwards, the end

 the entry looks like this:



 ** TODO Linkers (20-part series)

 :PROPERTIES:

 :URL:          http://a3f.at/lists/linkers

 :WGET_OPTIONS: --recursive -l 1 --span-hosts

 :ID:           D3BCE79F-C465-45D5-847E-7733684B9812

 :ARCHIVED_AT:  [2016-08-30-Tue-15-03-56]

 :END:



 The value in the `ARCHIVED_AT' property is a link that points to

 the root of the timestamped archival directory.  The ID property

 was automatically generated by `org-attach'.



** Diffing



 You can diff between two archives done for the same entry using

 `org-board-diff', so you can see how a page has changed over time.

 The diff recurses through the directory structure of an archive

 and will highlight any changes that have been made.  `ediff' is

 used if `zdiff' is not available (both are capable of recursing

 through a directory structure, but `zdiff' is possibly more

 intuitive to use).  `org-board-diff3' also offers diffing between

 three different archive directories.



** `org-board-after-archive-functions'



 `org-board-after-archive-functions' is a list of functions run

 after an archive is finished.  You can use it to do anything you

 like with newly archived pages.  For example, you could add a

 function that copies the new archive to an external hard disk, or

 opens the archived page in your browser as soon as it is done

 downloading.  You could also, for instance, copy all of the media

 files that were downloaded to your own media folder, and pop up a

 Dired buffer inside that folder to give you the chance to

 organize them.



 Here is an example function that copies the archived page to an

 external service called `IPFS' , a decentralized

 versioning and storage system geared towards web content (thanks

 to Alan Schmitt):



 (defun org-board-add-to-ipfs (urls output-folder event &rest _rest)

   "Add the downloaded site to IPFS."

   (unless (string-match "exited abnormally" event)

     (let* ((parsed-url (url-generic-parse-url (car urls)))

            (domain (url-host parsed-url))

            (path (url-filename parsed-url))

            (output (shell-command-to-string

 		     (concat "ipfs add -r "

 			     (concat output-folder domain))))

            (ipref

 	     (nth 1 (split-string

 		     (car (last (split-string output "\n" t))) " "))))

       (with-current-buffer (get-buffer-create "*org-board-post-archive*")

         (princ (format "your file is at %s\n"

 			(concat "http://localhost:8080/ipfs/" ipref path))

 		(current-buffer))))))



 (eval-after-load "org-board"

   '(add-hook 'org-board-after-archive-functions 'org-board-add-to-ipfs))



 Note that for forward compatibility, it's best to add to a final

 `&rest' argument to every function listed in

 `org-board-after-archive-functions', since a future update may

 provide each function with additional arguments (like a marker

 pointing to a buffer position where the archive was initiated, for

 example).



 For more information on `org-board-after-archive-functions', see

 its docstring and the docstring of

 `org-board-test-after-archive-function'.



 You can also interactively run an after-archive function with the

 command `org-board-run-after-archive-function'.  See its docstring

 for details.



* Getting started



** Installation



 There are two ways to install the package.  One way is to clone

 this repository and add the directory to your load-path manually.



 (add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/org-board")

 (require 'org-board)



 Alternatively, you can download the package directly from Emacs

 using MELPA .  M-x

 package-install RET org-board RET will take care of it.



** Keybindings



 The following keymap is defined in `org-board-keymap':



 | Key | Command                              |

 | a   | org-board-archive                    |

 | r   | org-board-archive-dry-run            |

 | n   | org-board-new                        |

 | k   | org-board-delete-all                 |

 | o   | org-board-open                       |

 | d   | org-board-diff                       |

 | 3   | org-board-diff3                      |

 | c   | org-board-cancel                     |

 | x   | org-board-run-after-archive-function |

 | O   | org-attach-reveal-in-emacs           |

 | ?   | Show help for this keymap.           |



 To install the keymap give it a prefix key, e.g.:



 (global-set-key (kbd "C-c o") org-board-keymap)



 Then typing `C-c o a' would run `org-board-archive', for example.



* Miscellaneous



 The location of `wget' should be picked up automatically from the

 `PATH' environment variable.  If it is not, then the variable

 `org-board-wget-program' can be customized.



 Other options are already set so that archiving bookmarks is done

 pretty much automatically.  With no `WGET_OPTIONS' specified, by

 default `org-board-archive' will just download the page and its

 requisites (images and CSS), and nothing else.



** Support for org-capture from Firefox (thanks to Alan Schmitt):



 On the Firefox side, install org-capture from here:



   http://chadok.info/firefox-org-capture/



 Alternatively, you can do it manually by following the

 instructions here:



   http://weblog.zamazal.org/org-mode-firefox/

     (in the “The advanced way” section)



 When org-capture is installed, add `(require 'org-protocol)' to

 your init file (`~/.emacs').



 Then create a capture template like this:



   (setq org-board-capture-file "my-org-board.org")



   (setq org-capture-templates

         `(...

           ("c" "capture through org protocol" entry

             (file+headline ,org-board-capture-file "Unsorted")

             "* %?%:description\n:PROPERTIES:\n:URL: %:link\n:END:\n\n Added %U")

           ...))



 And add a hook to `org-capture-before-finalize-hook':



   (defun do-org-board-dl-hook ()

     (when (equal (buffer-name)

             (concat "CAPTURE-" org-board-capture-file))

       (org-board-archive)))



   (add-hook 'org-capture-before-finalize-hook 'do-org-board-dl-hook)



* Acknowledgements



 Thanks to Alan Schmitt for the code to combine `org-board' and

 `org-capture', and for the example function used in the

 documentation of `org-board-after-archive-functions' above.