Readme

WARCAT: Web ARChive (WARC) Archiving Tool

Tool and library for handling Web ARChive (WARC) files.

Quick Start

Requirements:

• Python 3

Install stable version:

pip-3 install warcat

Or install latest version:

git clone git://github.com/chfoo/warcat.git
pip-3 install -r requirements.txt
python3 setup.py install

Example Run:

python3 -m warcat --help
python3 -m warcat list example/at.warc.gz
python3 -m warcat verify megawarc.warc.gz --progress
python3 -m warcat extract megawarc.warc.gz --output-dir /tmp/megawarc/ --progress

Supported commands

concat

Naively join archives into one

extract

Extract files from archive

help

List commands available

list

List contents of archive

pass

Load archive and write it back out

split

Split archives into individual records

verify

Verify digest and validate conformance

Library

Example:

>>> import warcat.model
>>> warc = warcat.model.WARC()
>>> warc.load('example/at.warc.gz')
>>> len(warc.records)
8
>>> record = warc.records[0]
>>> record.warc_type
'warcinfo'
>>> record.content_length
233
>>> record.header.version
'1.0'
>>> record.header.fields.list()
[('WARC-Type', 'warcinfo'), ('Content-Type', 'application/warc-fields'), ('WARC-Date', '2013-04-09T00:11:14Z'), ('WARC-Record-ID', '<urn:uuid:972777d2-4177-4c63-9fde-3877dacc174e>'), ('WARC-Filename', 'at.warc.gz'), ('WARC-Block-Digest', 'sha1:3C6SPSGP5QN2HNHKPTLYDHDPFYKYAOIX'), ('Content-Length', '233')]
>>> record.header.fields['content-type']
'application/warc-fields'
>>> record.content_block.fields.list()
[('software', 'Wget/1.13.4-2608 (linux-gnu)'), ('format', 'WARC File Format 1.0'), ('conformsTo', 'http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf'), ('robots', 'classic'), ('wget-arguments', '"http://www.archiveteam.org/" "--warc-file=at" ')]
>>> record.content_block.fields['software']
'Wget/1.13.4-2608 (linux-gnu)'
>>> record.content_block.payload.length
0
>>> bytes(warc)[:60]
b'WARC/1.0\r\nWARC-Type: warcinfo\r\nContent-Type: application/war'
>>> bytes(record.content_block.fields)[:60]
b'software: Wget/1.13.4-2608 (linux-gnu)\r\nformat: WARC File Fo'

Note

The library may not be entirely thread-safe yet.

About

The goal of the Warcat project is to create a tool and library as easy and fast as manipulating any other archive such as tar and zip archives.

Warcat is designed to handle large, gzip-ed files by partially extracting them as needed.

Warcat is provided without warranty and cannot guarantee the safety of your files. Remember to make backups and test them!

• Homepage: https://github.com/chfoo/warcat
• Questions?: https://answers.launchpad.net/warcat
• Bugs?: https://github.com/chfoo/warcat/issues
• PyPI: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/Warcat/
• Chat: irc://irc.efnet.org/archiveteam-bs (I’ll be on #archiveteam-bs on EFnet)

Specification

This implementation is based loosely on draft ISO 28500 papers WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf and warc_ISO_DIS_28500.pdf which can be found at http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/ .

File format

Here’s a quick description:

A WARC file contains one or more Records concatenated together. Each Record contains Named Fields, newline, a Content Block, newline, and newline. A Content Block may be two types: {binary data} or {Named Fields, newline, and binary data}. Named Fields consists of string, colon, string, and newline.

A Record may be compressed with gzip. Filenames ending with .warc.gz indicate one or more gzip compressed files concatenated together.

Alternatives

Warcat is inspired by

• https://github.com/internetarchive/warc
• http://code.hanzoarchives.com/warc-tools

Development

Testing

Always remember to test. Continue testing:

python3 -m unittest discover -p '*_test.py'
nosetests3

To-do

• Smart archive join
• Regex filtering of records
• Generate index to disk (eg, for fast resume)
• Grab files like wget and archive them
• See TODO and FIXME markers in code
• etc.