Oh... Oh, my. · 11:44am Aug 8th, 2013
Ever since I started reading stories that I really liked on fimfiction, I've always had a (perhaps irrational) fear of "what if this site gets taken down for whatever reason, or what if an author later deletes a story?"
When one author actually deleted a story once, (a story I had enjoyed reading) this fear was doubled.
Well, I've been getting into html/css/javascript/php/windows_batch_file_creation/gnu_utilities and other such things, and... I finally had learned enough to try out an idea...
I've since found out that any story on fimfiction can be downloaded by going to: http://www.fimfiction.net/download_story.php?story=#&html . You have to replace the "#" with the story's number of course. I presume that whenever a story is uploaded, it goes into knighty's database, and he likely has a story_id column or something like that setup as the primary key, to auto-increment whenever a story is uploaded, and I suppose what is happening is when you go to that link, it querys the server for the story file that corresponds to that number. Anyway, I have no clue how many stories are on fimfiction, but I have a guess that it is around 120,000 (that number has a basis, but I don't want to get into that here)... and basically, I just setup a script to download every story from fimfiction starting with story 1, all the way up until story 120,000.
Of course, hopefully I'll never need to use this massive collection of story-files that I'm going to put on my server, but now, if I ever find myself wanting to re-read a story that's been taken down, I know I have a copy of the first 120,000. I'll probably create a secondary script later to download new posted stories, and to update old downloads if the story has been added on to.
If anyone wants these scripts, I might be able to provide download links later, just leave a comment. (prerequisite: you'll need the php interpreter binary, and the "gnuwin wget" binary to properly use all of this. )
EDIT:
I've finally gotten my ass up, and made a guide: http://charleselentz.com/fimfictionthing/
It looks shitty, but I didn't want to spend all day making it look pretty, it's functional, and that's all that counts.
Your welcome.
Found this blog completely by accident, but I was having problems downloading this story as an HTML (which is the only format I'm willing to read them in). For some reason, instead of the story name .HTML, it will always come up as 'download_story.php', even when I 'Right-Click > Save Link As...' This is the only story that has ever done it.
Would you be willing to help? I'm doing this from McDonald's (don't have Internet), so it might be a few days before I'll be able to reply. Thanks in advance.
1297599
First things first: I'm sorry it took me so long to respond. I just checked my fimfiction account today.
Second: Chrome says it's receiving multiple headers, and won't even attempt the download for me. WGET and CURL both are able to download it though.
I HATE that i'm about to give you this advice, but if you try to download the file using Internet Explorer 10, it will download it, with the correct filename.
1297599
Go here for a guide if you want to do what I did
1303508>>1303581
Just used IE to download it. Worked. But hell its been forever since I last used IE, I forgot how shit it was. I was using Firefox, as that is the best browser for me (despite Firefox memory-whoring a lot, Chrome uses a lot more when you have 50+ tabs open).
Anyway, thanks. Couldn't use the other solution. Don't know the slightest in how they work internally.