A simple, fast, and reliable Coursera crawling & downloading tool

Todo

• Lectures (videos, subtitles, slides)
• Readings
• Quizs
• Jupyter notebooks

Install

Python 3.x is required. It is recommended to install this tool in a virtual environment

$ pip install dl_coursera
$ dl_coursera --version

How to use

$ dl_coursera --help
usage: dl_coursera [-h] [--version] [--email EMAIL] [--password PASSWORD]
                   [--cookies COOKIES] --slug SLUG [--isSpec]
                   [--n-worker N_WORKER] [--outdir OUTDIR] --how
                   {builtin,curl,aria2,aria2-rpc,uget} [--generate-input-file]
                   [--aria2-rpc-url ARIA2_RPC_URL]
                   [--aria2-rpc-secret ARIA2_RPC_SECRET]

A simple, fast, and reliable Coursera crawling & downloading tool

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --version             show program's version number and exit
  --email EMAIL
  --password PASSWORD
  --cookies COOKIES     path of the file which contains cookies in the Mozilla
                        `cookies.txt` file format
  --slug SLUG           slug of a course or a specializtion (with @--isSpec)
  --isSpec              indicate that @slug is slug of a specialization
  --n-worker N_WORKER   the number of threads used to crawl webpages. Default:
                        4. NOTE: if errors show up during crawling, try
                        decreasing this value
  --outdir OUTDIR       the directory to save files to. Default: `.'
  --how {builtin,curl,aria2,aria2-rpc,uget}
                        how to download files. builtin (NOT recommonded): use
                        the builtin downloader. curl: invoke the `curl' tool
                        or generate an "input file" for that tool (with
                        @--generate-input-file). aria2: invoke the `aria2c'
                        tool or generate an "input file" for that tool (with
                        @--generate-input-file). aria2-rpc (HIGHLY
                        recommonded): add downloading tasks to aria2 through
                        its XML-RPC interface. uget (recommonded): add
                        downloading tasks to the uGet Download Manager
  --generate-input-file
                        when @--how is curl/aria2, indicate that to generate
                        an "input file" for that tool, rather than to invoke
                        it
  --aria2-rpc-url ARIA2_RPC_URL
                        url of the aria2 XML-RPC interface. Default:
                        `http://localhost:6800/rpc'
  --aria2-rpc-secret ARIA2_RPC_SECRET
                        authorization token of the aria2 XML-RPC interface

If the command succeeds, you shall see `Done :-)'. If some UNEXPECTED errors
occur, try deleting everything generated by this tool in @outdir, and then run
the command again. For more information, visit `https://github.com/feng-
lei/dl_coursera'.

How to know slug of a course/specialization

Navigate to homepage of that course/specialization, you can see its slug at the address bar.

How to get the cookies.txt file

Sign in to Coursera, then use a browser extension to export cookies as cookies.txt. The cookies.txt will expire in about one month, so you do not need to do this so frequently.

Chrome

You can use the cookies.txt extension.

Firefox

You can use the Export Cookies extension.

Examples

(2019/08/30) Since Coursera has changed its login API, you should not use --email and --password anymore, use --cookies instead. More specifically, use

$ dl_coursera --cookies path/of/cookies.txt ......

rather than

$ dl_coursera --email XXXXXX --password XXXXXX ......

using the builtin downloader

$ dl_coursera --email XXXXXX --password XXXXXX --slug parallel-programming-in-java --outdir ppij --how builtin

using curl

$ dl_coursera --email XXXXXX --password XXXXXX --slug parallel-programming-in-java --outdir ppij --how curl

or

$ dl_coursera --email XXXXXX --password XXXXXX --slug parallel-programming-in-java --outdir ppij --how curl --generate-input-file

$ curl --config ppij/parallel-programming-in-java.download.curl_input_file.txt

using aria2

$ dl_coursera --email XXXXXX --password XXXXXX --slug parallel-programming-in-java --outdir ppij --how aria2

or

$ dl_coursera --email XXXXXX --password XXXXXX --slug parallel-programming-in-java --outdir ppij --how aria2 --generate-input-file

$ aria2c --input-file ppij/parallel-programming-in-java.download.aria2_input_file.txt

adding tasks to aria2 through its XML-RPC interface

Start aria2 with its XML-RPC interface enabled:

$ aria2c --enable-rpc

then type the following command in another terminal:

$ dl_coursera --email XXXXXX --password XXXXXX --slug parallel-programming-in-java --outdir ppij --how aria2-rpc

NOTE: using an aria2 GUI like webui-aria2 is highly recommended

adding tasks to the uGet Download Manager

start uGet:

$ uget        # on Windows
$ uget-gtk &  # on Linux

then type the following command:

$ dl_coursera --email XXXXXX --password XXXXXX --slug parallel-programming-in-java --outdir ppij --how uget