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https://github.com/icy/google-group-crawler

[Deprecated] Get (almost) original messages from google group archives. Your data is yours.
https://github.com/icy/google-group-crawler

bash cookie crawler curl google ownership wget

Last synced: 10 days ago
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[Deprecated] Get (almost) original messages from google group archives. Your data is yours.

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README 

        
WARNING: This project doesn't work and it's deprecated. 

**Reason:** Ajax support is completely deprecated by Google

  See also https://github.com/icy/google-group-crawler/issues/42#issuecomment-889013487



[![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/icy/google-group-crawler.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/icy/google-group-crawler)



## Download all messages from Google Group archive



`google-group-crawler` is a `Bash-4` script to download all (original)

messages from a Google group archive.

Private groups require some cookies string/file.

Groups with adult contents haven't been supported yet.



* [Installation](#installation)

* [Usage](#usage)

  * [The first run](#the-first-run)

  * [Update your local archive thanks to rss feed](#update-your-local-archive-thanks-to-rss-feed)

  * [Private group or Group hosted by an organization](#private-group-or-group-hosted-by-an-organization)

  * [The hook](#the-hook)

  * [What to do with your local archive](#what-to-do-with-your-local-archive)

  * [Rescan the whole local archive](#rescan-the-whole-local-archive)

  * [Known problems](#known-problems)

* [Contributions](#contributions)

* [Similar projects](#similar-projects)

* [License](#license)

* [Author](#author)

* [For script hackers](#for-script-hackers)



## Installation



The script requires `bash-4`, `sort`, `curl`, `sed`, `awk`.



Make the script executable with `chmod 755` and put them in your path

(e.g, `/usr/local/bin/`.)



The script may not work on `Windows` environment as reported in

https://github.com/icy/google-group-crawler/issues/26.



## Usage



### The first run



For private group, please

[prepare your cookies file](#private-group-or-group-hosted-by-an-organization).



    # export _CURL_OPTIONS="-v"       # use curl options to provide e.g, cookies

    # export _HOOK_FILE="/some/path"  # provide a hook file, see in #the-hook



    # export _ORG="your.company"      # required, if you are using Gsuite

    export _GROUP="mygroup"           # specify your group

    ./crawler.sh -sh                  # first run for testing

    ./crawler.sh -sh > curl.sh        # save your script

    bash curl.sh                      # downloading mbox files



You can execute `curl.sh` script multiple times, as `curl` will skip

quickly any fully downloaded files.



### Update your local archive thanks to RSS feed



After you have an archive from the first run you only need to add the latest

messages as shown in the feed. You can do that with `-rss` option and the

additional `_RSS_NUM` environment variable:



    export _RSS_NUM=50                # (optional. See Tips & Tricks.)

    ./crawler.sh -rss > update.sh     # using rss feed for updating

    bash update.sh                    # download the latest posts



It's useful to follow this way frequently to update your local archive.



### Private group or Group hosted by an organization



To download messages from private group or group hosted by your organization,

you need to provide some cookie information to the script. In the past,

the script uses `wget` and the Netscape cookie file format,

now we are using `curl` with cookie string and a configuration file.



0. Open Firefox, press F12 to enable Debug mode and select Network tab

   from the Debug console of Firefox. (You may find a similar way for

   your favorite browser.)

1. Log in to your testing google account, and access your group.

   For example

     https://groups.google.com/forum/?_escaped_fragment_=categories/google-group-crawler-public

   (replace `google-group-crawler-public` with your group name).

   Make sure you can read some contents with your own group URI.

2. Now from the Network tab in Debug console, select the address

   and select `Copy -> Copy Request Headers`. You will have a lot of

   things in the result, but please paste them in your text editor

   and select only `Cookie` part.

3. Now prepare a file `curl-options.txt` as below



        user-agent = "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:74.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/74.0"

        header = "Cookie: "



   Of course, replace the `` part with your own cookie strings.

   See `man curl` for more details of the file format.



2. Specify your cookie file by `_CURL_OPTIONS`:



        export _CURL_OPTIONS="-K /path/to/curl-options.txt"



   Now every hidden group can be downloaded :)



### The hook



If you want to execute a `hook` command after a `mbox` file is downloaded,

you can do as below.



1. Prepare a Bash script file that contains a definition of `__curl_hook`

   command. The first argument is to specify an output filename, and the

   second argument is to specify an URL. For example, here is simple hook



        # $1: output file

        # $2: url (https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=foobar/topicID/msgID)

        __curl_hook() {

          if [[ "$(stat -c %b "$1")" == 0 ]]; then

            echo >&2 ":: Warning: empty output '$1'"

          fi

        }



    In this example, the `hook` will check if the output file is empty,

    and send a warning to the standard error device.



2. Set your environment variable `_HOOK_FILE` which should be the path

   to your file. For example,



        export _GROUP=archlinuxvn

        export _HOOK_FILE=$HOME/bin/curl.hook.sh



   Now the hook file will be loaded in your future output of commands

   `crawler.sh -sh` or `crawler.sh -rss`.



### What to do with your local archive



The downloaded messages are found under `$_GROUP/mbox/*`.



They are in `RFC 822` format (possibly with obfuscated email addresses)

and they can be converted to `mbox` format easily before being imported

to your email clients  (`Thunderbird`, `claws-mail`, etc.)



You can also use [mhonarc](https://www.mhonarc.org/) ultility to convert

the downloaded to `HTML` files.



See also



* https://github.com/icy/google-group-crawler/issues/15#issuecomment-221018338

* https://github.com/icy/google-group-crawler/issues/35#issuecomment-580659966

* My script https://github.com/icy/bashy/blob/master/libs/raw2mbox.sh



### Rescan the whole local archive



Sometimes you may need to rescan / redownload all messages.

This can be done by removing all temporary files



    rm -fv $_GROUP/threads/t.*    # this is a must

    rm -fv $_GROUP/msgs/m.*       # see also Tips & Tricks



or you can use `_FORCE` option:



    _FORCE="true" ./crawler.sh -sh



Another option is to delete all files under `$_GROUP/` directory.

As usual, remember to backup before you delete some thing.



### Known problems



1. Fails on group with adult contents (https://github.com/icy/google-group-crawler/issues/14)

1. This script may not recover emails from public groups.

  When you use valid cookies, you may see the original emails

  if you are a manager of the group. See also https://github.com/icy/google-group-crawler/issues/16.

2. When cookies are used, the original emails may be recovered

  and you must filter them before making your archive public.

3. Script can't fetch from group whose name contains some special character (e.g, `+`)

  See also https://github.com/icy/google-group-crawler/issues/30



## Contributions



1. `parallel` support: @Pikrass has a script to download messages in parallel.

  It's discussed in the ticket https://github.com/icy/google-group-crawler/issues/32.

  The script: https://gist.github.com/Pikrass/f8462ff8a9af18f97f08d2a90533af31

2. `raw access denied`: @alexivkin mentioned he could use the `print` function

  to work-around the issue. See it here

  https://github.com/icy/google-group-crawler/issues/29#issuecomment-468810786



## Similar projects



* (website) [Google Takeout - Download all info for any groups you own](https://takeout.google.com/)

* (Shell/curl) [ggscrape - Download emails from a Google Group. Rescue your archives](https://git.scuttlebot.io/%25nkOkiGF0Dd321GmNqs6aW%2BWHaH9Uunq4m8dVfJuU%2Bps%3D.sha256)

* (Python/Webdriver) [scrape_google_groups.py  - A simple script to scrape a google group](https://gist.github.com/punchagan/7947337)

* (Python/webscraping.webkit) [gg-scrape - Liberate you data from google groups](https://github.com/jrholliday/gg-scrape)

* (Python/urllib) [gg_scraper](https://gitlab.com/mcepl/gg_scraper)

* (PHP/libcurl) [scraping-google-groups](http://saturnboy.com/2010/03/scraping-google-groups/)



## License



This work is released under the terms of a MIT license.



## Author



This script is written by Anh K. Huynh.



He wrote this script because he couldn't resolve the problem by using

`nodejs`, `phantomjs`, `Watir`.



New web technology just makes life harder, doesn't it?



## For script hackers



Please skip this section unless your really know to work with `Bash` and shells.



0. If you clean your files _(as below)_, you may notice that it will be

   very slow when re-downloading all files. You may consider to use

   the `-rss` option instead. This option will fetch data from a `rss` link.



   It's recommmeded to use the `-rss` option for daily update. By default,

   the number of items is 50. You can change it by the `_RSS_NUM` variable.

   However, don't use a very big number, because Google will ignore that.



1. Because Topics is a FIFO list, you only need to remove the last file.

   The script will re-download the last item, and if there is a new page,

   that page will be fetched.



        ls $_GROUP/msgs/m.* \

        | sed -e 's#\.[0-9]\+$##g' \

        | sort -u \

        | while read f; do

            last_item="$f.$( \

              ls $f.* \

              | sed -e 's#^.*\.\([0-9]\+\)#\1#g' \

              | sort -n \

              | tail -1 \

            )";

            echo $last_item;

          done



2. The list of threads is a LIFO list. If you want to rescan your list,

   you will need to delete all files under `$_D_OUTPUT/threads/`



3. You can set the time for `mbox` output files, as below



        ls $_GROUP/mbox/m.* \

        | while read FILE; do \

            date="$( \

              grep ^Date: $FILE\

              | head -1\

              | sed -e 's#^Date: ##g' \

            )";

            touch -d "$date" $FILE;

          done



    This will be very useful, for example, when you want to use the

    `mbox` files with `mhonarc`.