zimmer is a package for creating ZIM files from Mediawiki-powered wikis.

The package consists of 2 scripts:

• wikizimmer.js — dumps the wiki's articles into a collection of static HTML files.

• zimmer.js — builds a ZIM file from a static HTML files collection. Historically, zimmer.js is mostly a drop-in replacement for zimwriterfs with a notable exception: it doesn't support withFullTextIndex option (index format is not documented).

wikizimmer.js unlike to mwoffliner does not depend on the Parsoid and Redis and zimmer.js unlike to zimwriterfs doesn't depend on the zimlib.

The package is relatively easy to install and it can even process some wikis running rather old versions of the Mediawiki engine.

Installation

Requirement: node version >= 10.4.0

With npm globally

npm i -g git+https://github.com/vadp/zimmer

or

Manually

• Clone zimmer from Github or download ZIP
• Install dependencies: npm install
• Make wikizimmer.js and zimmer.js executable
• Optionally symlink both scripts into some directory available in your $PATH:

    ln -s wikizimmer.js <some directory in $PATH>/wikizimmer
    ln -s zimmer.js <some directory in $PATH>/zimmer

Usage

Run either of scripts with '--help' switch to see the list of all options available.

The process of creating a ZIM file from a wiki consists of 2 parts.

Example:

• Dumping a wiki to a local collection of static HTML files:

wikizimmer https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Pisa

will dump all articles from the main name space (aka 0 or '') at the https://en.wikivoyage.org to the directory en.wikivoyage.org. The URL to a particular page is quite important in this case as this page's styling is used as a template for all other pages in the dump, so wikivoyage listings, for example, are rendered correctly at the static page of the dump.

• Building a ZIM file:

zimmer --optimg en.wikivoyage.org

will pack the content of the en.wikivoyage.org into the en.wikivoyage.org.zim. zimmer.js with --optimg option will recompress the images in the dump to save some space.

Notes:

• wikizimmer.js requires a public access both the normal web interface and to the wiki's API interface.
• To dump a HTTPS server with a self-signed certificate you need to set an environment variable: NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED=0
• The most options of the zimmer.js are optional as it fetches the relevant metadata from the dump created by wikizimmer.js. Perhaps only --optimg option is rather important if you want to save some space.