Python package & CLI tool that interfaces the Wayback Machine APIs

Introduction

Waybackpy is a Python package and a CLI tool that interfaces with the Wayback Machine APIs.

Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has 3 useful public APIs.

• SavePageNow or Save API
• CDX Server API
• Availability API

These three APIs can be accessed via the waybackpy either by importing it from a python file/module or from the command-line interface.

Installation

Using pip, from PyPI (recommended):

pip install waybackpy -U

Using conda, from conda-forge (recommended):

See also waybackpy feedstock, maintainers are @rafaelrdealmeida, @labriunesp and @akamhy.

conda install -c conda-forge waybackpy

Install directly from this git repository (NOT recommended):

pip install git+https://github.com/akamhy/waybackpy.git

Docker Image

Docker Hub: hub.docker.com/r/secsi/waybackpy

Docker image is automatically updated on every release by Regulary and Automatically Updated Docker Images (RAUDI).

RAUDI is a tool by SecSI, an Italian cybersecurity startup.

Usage

As a Python package

Save API aka SavePageNow

>>> from waybackpy import WaybackMachineSaveAPI
>>> url = "https://github.com"
>>> user_agent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:40.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/40.0"
>>>
>>> save_api = WaybackMachineSaveAPI(url, user_agent)
>>> save_api.save()
https://web.archive.org/web/20220118125249/https://github.com/
>>> save_api.cached_save
False
>>> save_api.timestamp()
datetime.datetime(2022, 1, 18, 12, 52, 49)

CDX API aka CDXServerAPI

>>> from waybackpy import WaybackMachineCDXServerAPI
>>> url = "https://google.com"
>>> user_agent = "my new app's user agent"
>>> cdx_api = WaybackMachineCDXServerAPI(url, user_agent)

oldest

>>> cdx_api.oldest()
com,google)/ 19981111184551 http://google.com:80/ text/html 200 HOQ2TGPYAEQJPNUA6M4SMZ3NGQRBXDZ3 381
>>> oldest = cdx_api.oldest()
>>> oldest
com,google)/ 19981111184551 http://google.com:80/ text/html 200 HOQ2TGPYAEQJPNUA6M4SMZ3NGQRBXDZ3 381
>>> oldest.archive_url
'https://web.archive.org/web/19981111184551/http://google.com:80/'
>>> oldest.original
'http://google.com:80/'
>>> oldest.urlkey
'com,google)/'
>>> oldest.timestamp
'19981111184551'
>>> oldest.datetime_timestamp
datetime.datetime(1998, 11, 11, 18, 45, 51)
>>> oldest.statuscode
'200'
>>> oldest.mimetype
'text/html'

newest

>>> newest = cdx_api.newest()
>>> newest
com,google)/ 20220217234427 http://@google.com/ text/html 301 Y6PVK4XWOI3BXQEXM5WLLWU5JKUVNSFZ 563
>>> newest.archive_url
'https://web.archive.org/web/20220217234427/http://@google.com/'
>>> newest.timestamp
'20220217234427'

near

>>> near = cdx_api.near(year=2010, month=10, day=10, hour=10, minute=10)
>>> near.archive_url
'https://web.archive.org/web/20101010101435/http://google.com/'
>>> near
com,google)/ 20101010101435 http://google.com/ text/html 301 Y6PVK4XWOI3BXQEXM5WLLWU5JKUVNSFZ 391
>>> near.timestamp
'20101010101435'
>>> near.timestamp
'20101010101435'
>>> near = cdx_api.near(wayback_machine_timestamp=2008080808)
>>> near.archive_url
'https://web.archive.org/web/20080808051143/http://google.com/'
>>> near = cdx_api.near(unix_timestamp=1286705410)
>>> near
com,google)/ 20101010101435 http://google.com/ text/html 301 Y6PVK4XWOI3BXQEXM5WLLWU5JKUVNSFZ 391
>>> near.archive_url
'https://web.archive.org/web/20101010101435/http://google.com/'
>>>

snapshots

>>> from waybackpy import WaybackMachineCDXServerAPI
>>> url = "https://pypi.org"
>>> user_agent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:40.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/40.0"
>>> cdx = WaybackMachineCDXServerAPI(url, user_agent, start_timestamp=2016, end_timestamp=2017)
>>> for item in cdx.snapshots():
...     print(item.archive_url)
...
https://web.archive.org/web/20160110011047/http://pypi.org/
https://web.archive.org/web/20160305104847/http://pypi.org/
.
. # URLS REDACTED FOR READABILITY
.
https://web.archive.org/web/20171127171549/https://pypi.org/
https://web.archive.org/web/20171206002737/http://pypi.org:80/

Availability API

It is recommended to not use the availability API due to performance issues. All the methods of availability API interface class, WaybackMachineAvailabilityAPI, are also implemented in the CDX server API interface class, WaybackMachineCDXServerAPI. Also note that the newest() method of WaybackMachineAvailabilityAPI can be more recent than WaybackMachineCDXServerAPI's same method.

>>> from waybackpy import WaybackMachineAvailabilityAPI
>>>
>>> url = "https://google.com"
>>> user_agent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:40.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/40.0"
>>>
>>> availability_api = WaybackMachineAvailabilityAPI(url, user_agent)

oldest

>>> availability_api.oldest()
https://web.archive.org/web/19981111184551/http://google.com:80/

newest

>>> availability_api.newest()
https://web.archive.org/web/20220118150444/https://www.google.com/

near

>>> availability_api.near(year=2010, month=10, day=10, hour=10)
https://web.archive.org/web/20101010101708/http://www.google.com/

Documentation is at https://github.com/akamhy/waybackpy/wiki/Python-package-docs.

As a CLI tool

Demo video on asciinema.org, you can copy the text from video:

CLI documentation is at https://github.com/akamhy/waybackpy/wiki/CLI-docs.

CONTRIBUTORS

AUTHORS

• akamhy (https://github.com/akamhy)
• eggplants (https://github.com/eggplants)
• danvalen1 (https://github.com/danvalen1)
• AntiCompositeNumber (https://github.com/AntiCompositeNumber)
• rafaelrdealmeida (https://github.com/rafaelrdealmeida)
• jonasjancarik (https://github.com/jonasjancarik)
• jfinkhaeuser (https://github.com/jfinkhaeuser)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

• mhmdiaa (https://github.com/mhmdiaa) --known-urls is based on this gist.
• dequeued0 (https://github.com/dequeued0) for reporting bugs and useful feature requests.