ArchiveBox is a powerful self-hosted internet archiving solution written in Python 3. You feed it URLs of pages you want to archive, and it saves them to disk in a varitety of formats depending on the configuration and the content it detects. ArchiveBox can be installed via [Docker](https://docs.docker.com/get-docker/) or [`pip3`](https://wiki.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide/Download).
Once installed, URLs can be added via the command line `archivebox add` or the built-in Web UI `archivebox server`. It can ingest bookmarks from a service like Pocket/Pinboard, your entire browsing history, RSS feeds, or URLs one at a time.
The main index is a self-contained `data/index.sqlite3` file, and each snapshot is stored as a folder `data/archive/<timestamp>/`, with an easy-to-read `index.html` and `index.json` within. For each page, ArchiveBox auto-extracts many types of assets/media and saves them in standard formats, with out-of-the-box support for: 3 types of HTML snapshots (wget, Chrome headless, singlefile), a PDF snapshot, a screenshot, a WARC archive, git repositories, images, audio, video, subtitles, article text, and more. The snapshots are browseable and managable offline through the filesystem, the built-in webserver, or the Python API.
For more information, see the [full Quickstart guide](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Quickstart), [Usage](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Usage), and [Configuration](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Configuration) docs.
ArchiveBox is a command line tool, self-hostable web-archiving server, and Python library all-in-one. It's available as a Python3 package or a Docker image, both methods provide the same CLI, Web UI, and on-disk data format.
It works on Docker, macOS, and Linux/BSD. Windows is not officially supported, but users have reported getting it working using the WSL2 + Docker.
To use ArchiveBox you start by creating a folder for your data to live in (it can be anywhere on your system), and running `archivebox init` inside of it. That will create a sqlite3 index and an `ArchiveBox.conf` file. After that, you can continue to add/remove/search/import/export/manage/config/etc using the CLI `archivebox help`, or you can run the Web UI (recommended):
```bash
archivebox manage createsuperuser
archivebox server 0.0.0.0:8000
open http://127.0.0.1:8000
```
The CLI is considered "stable", and the ArchiveBox Python API and REST APIs are in "beta".
At the end of the day, the goal is to sleep soundly knowing that the part of the internet you care about will be automatically preserved in multiple, durable long-term formats that will be accessible for decades (or longer). You can also self-host your archivebox server on a public domain to provide archive.org-style public access to your site snapshots.
- [**Free & open source**](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/blob/master/LICENSE), doesn't require signing up for anything, stores all data locally
- [**Few dependencies**](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Install#dependencies) and [simple command line interface](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Usage#CLI-Usage)
- [**Comprehensive documentation**](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki), [active development](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Roadmap), and [rich community](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Web-Archiving-Community)
- Easy to set up **[scheduled importing](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Scheduled-Archiving) from multiple sources**
- ~~**Suitable for paywalled / [authenticated content](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Configuration#chrome_user_data_dir)** (can use your cookies)~~ (do not do this until v0.5 is released with some security fixes)
- Architected to be able to run [**many varieties of scripts during archiving**](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/issues/51), e.g. to extract media, summarize articles, [scroll pages](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/issues/80), [close modals](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/issues/175), expand comment threads, etc.
- Can also [**mirror content to 3rd-party archiving services**](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Configuration#submit_archive_dot_org) automatically for redundancy
It also includes a built-in scheduled import feature and browser bookmarklet, so you can ingest URLs from RSS feeds, websites, or the filesystem regularly.
## Output formats
All of ArchiveBox's state (including the index, snapshot data, and config file) is stored in a single folder called the "ArchiveBox data folder". All `archivebox` CLI commands must be run from inside this folder, and you first create it by running `archivebox init`.
The on-disk layout is optimized to be easy to browse by hand and durable long-term. The main index is a standard sqlite3 database (it can also be exported as static JSON/HTML), and the archive snapshots are organized by date-added timestamp in the `archive/` subfolder. Each snapshot subfolder includes a static JSON and HTML index describing its contents, and the snapshot extrator outputs are plain files within the folder (e.g. `media/example.mp4`, `git/somerepo.git`, `static/someimage.png`, etc.)
```bash
ls ./archive/<timestamp>/
```
- **Index:** `index.html` & `index.json` HTML and JSON index files containing metadata and details
- **Title:** `title` title of the site
- **Favicon:** `favicon.ico` favicon of the site
- **WGET Clone:** `example.com/page-name.html` wget clone of the site, with .html appended if not present
- **WARC:** `warc/<timestamp>.gz` gzipped WARC of all the resources fetched while archiving
- **PDF:** `output.pdf` Printed PDF of site using headless chrome
- **Screenshot:** `screenshot.png` 1440x900 screenshot of site using headless chrome
- **DOM Dump:** `output.html` DOM Dump of the HTML after rendering using headless chrome
- **URL to Archive.org:** `archive.org.txt` A link to the saved site on archive.org
- **Audio & Video:** `media/` all audio/video files + playlists, including subtitles & metadata with youtube-dl
- **Source Code:** `git/` clone of any repository found on github, bitbucket, or gitlab links
It does everything out-of-the-box by default, but you can disable or tweak [individual archive methods](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Configuration) via environment variables or config file.
You don't need to install all the dependencies, ArchiveBox will automatically enable the relevant modules based on whatever you have available, but it's recommended to use the official [Docker image](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Docker) with everything preinstalled.
If you so choose, you can also install ArchiveBox and its dependencies directly on any Linux or macOS systems using the [automated setup script](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Quickstart) or the [system package manager](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Install).
ArchiveBox is written in Python 3 so it requires `python3` and `pip3` available on your system. It also uses a set of optional, but highly recommended external dependencies for archiving sites: `wget` (for plain HTML, static files, and WARC saving), `chromium` (for screenshots, PDFs, JS execution, and more), `youtube-dl` (for audio and video), `git` (for cloning git repos), and `nodejs` (for readability and singlefile), and more.
## Caveats
If you're importing URLs containing secret slugs or pages with private content (e.g Google Docs, CodiMD notepads, etc), you may want to disable some of the extractor modules to avoid leaking private URLs to 3rd party APIs during the archiving process.
Be aware that malicious archived JS can also read the contents of other pages in your archive due to snapshot CSRF and XSS protections being imperfect. See the [Security Overview](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Security-Overview#stealth-mode) page for more details.
Support for saving multiple snapshots of each site over time will be [added soon](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/issues/179) (along with the ability to view diffs of the changes between runs). For now ArchiveBox is designed to only archive each URL with each extractor type once. A workaround to take multiple snapshots of the same URL is to make them slightly different by adding a hash:
Vast treasure troves of knowledge are lost every day on the internet to link rot. As a society, we have an imperative to preserve some important parts of that treasure, just like we preserve our books, paintings, and music in physical libraries long after the originals go out of print or fade into obscurity.
Whether it's to resist censorship by saving articles before they get taken down or edited, or
just to save a collection of early 2010's flash games you love to play, having the tools to
archive internet content enables to you save the stuff you care most about before it disappears.
<sup><i>Image from <a href="https://digiday.com/media/wtf-link-rot/">WTF is Link Rot?</a>...</i><br/></sup>
</div>
The balance between the permanence and ephemeral nature of content on the internet is part of what makes it beautiful.
I don't think everything should be preserved in an automated fashion, making all content permanent and never removable, but I do think people should be able to decide for themselves and effectively archive specific content that they care about.
Because modern websites are complicated and often rely on dynamic content,
ArchiveBox archives the sites in **several different formats** beyond what public archiving services like Archive.org and Archive.is are capable of saving. Using multiple methods and the market-dominant browser to execute JS ensures we can save even the most complex, finicky websites in at least a few high-quality, long-term data formats.
All the archived links are stored by date bookmarked in `./archive/<timestamp>`, and everything is indexed nicely with JSON & HTML files. The intent is for all the content to be viewable with common software in 50 - 100 years without needing to run ArchiveBox in a VM.
▶ **Check out our [community page](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Web-Archiving-Community) for an index of web archiving initiatives and projects.**
<img src="https://i.imgur.com/4nkFjdv.png" width="10%" align="left"/> The aim of ArchiveBox is to go beyond what the Wayback Machine and other public archiving services can do, by adding a headless browser to replay sessions accurately, and by automatically extracting all the content in multiple redundant formats that will survive being passed down to historians and archivists through many generations.
ArchiveBox differentiates itself from [similar projects](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Web-Archiving-Community#Web-Archiving-Projects) by being a simple, one-shot CLI interface for users to ingest bulk feeds of URLs over extended periods, as opposed to being a backend service that ingests individual, manually-submitted URLs from a web UI. However, we also have the option to add urls via a web interface through our Django frontend.
#### Private Local Archives vs Centralized Public Archives
Unlike crawler software that starts from a seed URL and works outwards, or public tools like Archive.org designed for users to manually submit links from the public internet, ArchiveBox tries to be a set-and-forget archiver suitable for archiving your entire browsing history, RSS feeds, or bookmarks, ~~including private/authenticated content that you wouldn't otherwise share with a centralized service~~ (do not do this until v0.5 is released with some security fixes). Also by having each user store their own content locally, we can save much larger portions of everyone's browsing history than a shared centralized service would be able to handle.
#### Storage Requirements
Because ArchiveBox is designed to ingest a firehose of browser history and bookmark feeds to a local disk, it can be much more disk-space intensive than a centralized service like the Internet Archive or Archive.today. However, as storage space gets cheaper and compression improves, you should be able to use it continuously over the years without having to delete anything. In my experience, ArchiveBox uses about 5gb per 1000 articles, but your milage may vary depending on which options you have enabled and what types of sites you're archiving. By default, it archives everything in as many formats as possible, meaning it takes more space than a using a single method, but more content is accurately replayable over extended periods of time. Storage requirements can be reduced by using a compressed/deduplicated filesystem like ZFS/BTRFS, or by setting `SAVE_MEDIA=False` to skip audio & video files.
## Learn more
Whether you want to learn which organizations are the big players in the web archiving space, want to find a specific open-source tool for your web archiving need, or just want to see where archivists hang out online, our Community Wiki page serves as an index of the broader web archiving community. Check it out to learn about some of the coolest web archiving projects and communities on the web!
- Check out the ArchiveBox [Roadmap](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Roadmap) and [Changelog](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Changelog)
- Learn why archiving the internet is important by reading the "[On the Importance of Web Archiving](https://parameters.ssrc.org/2018/09/on-the-importance-of-web-archiving/)" blog post.
- Or reach out to me for questions and comments via [@theSquashSH](https://twitter.com/thesquashSH) on Twitter.
We use the [Github wiki system](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki) and [Read the Docs](https://archivebox.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) (WIP) for documentation.
All contributions to ArchiveBox are welcomed! Check our [issues](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/issues) and [Roadmap](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Roadmap) for things to work on, and please open an issue to discuss your proposed implementation before working on things! Otherwise we may have to close your PR if it doesn't align with our roadmap.
<sub><i>This project is maintained mostly in <a href="https://nicksweeting.com/blog#About">my spare time</a> with the help from generous contributors and Monadical.com.</i></sub>
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