# wayback-machine-downloader
> Download an entire website from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine

## Summary
Download complete websites from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine with directory structure reconstruction and filtering options.

## Capabilities
- Download an entire website from Wayback Machine archives
- Recreate original directory structure with auto-generated index.html files
- Download original files, not Wayback Machine rewritten versions
- Filter by timestamp range to get snapshots from specific dates
- Filter by URL patterns using regular expressions
- Exclude specific file types or paths
- Concurrent downloads for faster retrieval
- JSON output listing available files without downloading
- Exact URL mode for precise downloads

## When to Use
- When you need to recover a website that is no longer online
- When you want to download a historical snapshot of a website
- When you need to archive a website from the Wayback Machine
- When researching how a website looked at a specific point in time

## When NOT to Use
- When the website was never archived by the Wayback Machine
- When you need to scrape a live website (use wget or httrack instead)
- When you need only a single page rather than an entire site

## Usage Patterns
### Download an entire site
```
wayback_machine_downloader http://example.com
```
Downloads the latest version of every file from example.com on the Wayback Machine

### Download from a specific time period
```
wayback_machine_downloader http://example.com --from 20140101 --to 20141231
```
Downloads only snapshots from the year 2014

### Filter by file type
```
wayback_machine_downloader http://example.com --only '/\.pdf$/'
```
Downloads only PDF files from the archived site

### Concurrent downloads
```
wayback_machine_downloader http://example.com --concurrency 10
```
Uses 10 concurrent connections for faster downloading

### List files without downloading
```
wayback_machine_downloader http://example.com --list
```
Lists available files as JSON without downloading them

## Installation
- **gem**: `gem install wayback_machine_downloader`
- **docker**: `docker pull hartator/wayback-machine-downloader`

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Source: https://littlescripts.sh/tools/wayback-machine-downloader