How to download a complete thread -- well, not the images :slight_frown:

[Beryllos]

I just worked out how to save a complete thread, but it’s rather geeky, as in not user friendly. It is written in bash, a GNU/Linux scripting language. Here is an example that I used to download Change One Letter:

for i in $(seq -w 1 20 12000)
do
    curl "https://forums.catholic-questions.org/t/change-one-letter/453921/$i" > COL1-$i.html
    grep "This topic was automatically closed" COL1-$i.html; 
    if [ "$?" -eq 0 ]
    then
        break
    fi
done

Each curl statement downloads 20 posts. The URL must be correct for the thread of interest. If the topic was not automatically closed (it’s still open), the grep comparison string should to be modified to some text which is unique to the last post. After I worked out this method, it took about 12 minutes to download all four of the Change One Letter threads.

Sorry about the rough code.

 

[Beryllos]

If anyone has a better way, feel free to post it here.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

For those who are not technically inclined, one can also highlight the thread text in one’s browser - however many posts you want to save - and just do a copy and paste into a Word document and save that.

This will also save the images in the thread although user avatars and emoticons might show up as oversized when you paste them.

 

[Beryllos]

A clarification: My script does not download the images. It makes links to online images. Eventually the images which are stored at CAF or Discourse will no longer be available. If you wish, you may save/download them yourself, e.g., using the image download function of your browser.

 

[Beryllos]

bumping the thread so that it doesn’t close yet

 

[Beryllos]

A great suggestion just came in on a related thread:

How to print a CAF thread? Casual Discussion

Add /print to the end of the URL. This seems to be heavily limited (you can print just a few threads before you’re forced to wait and try again later) but is handy for printing a few large threads which you wanted to save for posterity.