I've previously archived entire copies of some defunct UFO discussions forums. I've been reluctant to download the entirety of some very large discussion forums, such as AboveTopSecret.com, as they are still functioning and are very large.
However, ATS has gradually been becoming less functional over the last few years, with numerous problems developing and not being addressed. When ATS was sold a while ago, the owners raised concern that ATS might have to shut down due to increased maintenance costs. The new owners seem to have avoided incurring costs to address those maintenance concerns, so I am concerned that ATS may suddenly cease to exist.
I posted quite a lot of material on ATS over several years and would prefer that material is not lost. So, I have developed some code (with the help of some other ATS users (particularly "drewlander") and ChatGPT) to archive selected ATS threads as PDFs. I have archived about 70 of my own threads and may archive the threads of a few other ATS oldtimers if they give their permission. (I have asked on ATS a few times whether the moderators have any objection to this plan and no objections have been raised, and one moderator has helped develop the relevant code).
The relevant code (as improved by ChatGPT) is:
@echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
for /f "usebackq tokens=1-3 delims=," %%A in ("thread_details.csv") do (
echo %%A %%B %%C
rem %%A = thread number, %%B = number of final page, %%C = thread name
timeout 2
for /l %%a in (1,1,%%B) do (
set "n=00%%a"
set "n=!n:~-3!"
"C:\Program Files\wkhtmltopdf\bin\wkhtmltopdf.exe" https://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread%%A/pg%%a thread%%A_!n!.pdf
)
pdftk "thread%%A_*.pdf" cat output "ATS thread%%A - %%C.pdf"
del thread*.pdf
)
This code iterates through a list saved in a file called "thread_details.csv". That file can be used to store a list of relevant threads, in the format:
THREADNUMBER,NUMBER OF PAGES,BRIEF TITLE
