FFExtract

[Lockblade]

I've been trying to convince one of my friends to buy a reader, but the one thing that is holding her back is the lack of an easy way to get her favorite stories on sites like Fanfiction.net, FictionPress, etc. on it. So, I spent the last to days coding, and FFExtract 0.1 was born! It takes input of the story ID of any story on FanFiction.Net and downloads chapters, then converts it into an RTF file. Everything is hand coded in Java, an the source code will be released under GPL when I feel happy with what I've done.

REMEMBER: THIS IS MERELY A PROOF OF CONCEPT AT THE MOMENT, SO DON'T EXPECT IT TO SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS... yet.
Limitations of 0.1:

• Stories are not guaranteed to work
• There's no real GUI in place yet, just Java popups
• Only FanFiction.net is supported at the moment
• Only outputs in RTF format
• Doesn't support divider lines
• Only downloads 2 chapters at the moment

Feedback is appreciated!

[dcalder]

There are two other fanfiction downloader programs that I'm aware of, DeFFNetizer and Fanfiction Downloader. There is also an online fic download helper site which supports 19 sites available at http://www.ficsavers.com/.

DeFFNetizer has been around for a while, but it's changed maintainers and the new maintainer has had to learn a new language (Python) in order to work on it, so things have been at a bit of a standstill lately. It saves individual chapters in HTML format. Currently, it works for Fanfiction.Net and TTHFanFic.Com (Twisting The Hellmouth). As well, the following sites either have limited functionality or are slated for future:

* FicWad.Com
* LOTRFanFiction.Com
* PortKey.Org
* HarryPotterFanFiction.Com
* PhoenixSong.net

DeFFNetizer is available at http://www.deffnetizer.com/. Source code is available, along with Windows and Mac binaries.

The second fic downloader is one that I've just recently come across but it's already pretty much replaced DeFFNetizer for me. Fanfiction Downloader is available at http://www.home-eisele.de/downloader_e.php. The developer responded very quickly when I submitted a bug report and a couple of suggestions through the site. The current release (3.7) supports the following sites:

- fanfiction.net
- fanfiktion.de
- checkmated.com
- portkey.org
- adultfanfiction.net
- Animexx.de (test)
- Fictionalley.org (schnoogle, astronomy....)
- Fictionpress.com

Fanfiction Downloader will save as individual chapters or as a single file. It saves in RTF, HTML, or PDF. Very slick - but, unfortunately, only currently available as a Windows binary. It's written in C++.

[Lockblade]

I hope to eventually support integrated conversion to eBook formats, and definitely more sites, but I think it needs to be able toe tract at least one site to RTf format almost perfectly before I decide to add on extra features.
Anyway, I've finished version 0.2, and this one actually supports more than two chapters. It also improves on the HTML to RTF parser.

What's new:

• Automatically detects and downloads all chapters of a story.
• Better HTML to RTF conversion

Known Bugs:

• The author reporting system is broken, it will not work for most pen names
• The program sometimes does not detect the right number of chapters. This is due to technical problems with the website, not the program.

Planned features:

• A GUI
• Better HTML to RTF conversion
• Clean up of code

As you can see, I'm not really trying to pump these tings out, but I won't drop this program until I can at least fully support fanfiction.net to RTF, HTML, and PDF files. Please email me about bugs so that I can fix them quickly.

[joek]

Hi,

I am having the environment Eclipse + MySql. I am using iText library. I m trying to convert (html to pdf or rtf). I have converted the text but i couldn't convert textbox and textarea. OR how to use your jarfile (FFNE 0.2.jar).. Could u send sample code.


Thanks in Advance.

[ilovejedd]

Since development on this particular project seems to have stopped, may I recommend FLAG (Fanfiction.net Lightweight Automated Grabber) as an alternative? It's in PHP so the program is pretty much the source. The program is modular and it's very easy to add support for new output formats and fanfiction websites.