a method to batch export your livejournal images

[ironymaiden]

i didn't realize how many pictures i had hosted with eljay over the years. i was unable to find an official download function on the eljay site.

this isn't the be all/end all, this is where i got to through trial and error without any scripting. this method does require accepting the TOS, as far as i can tell.

***
i'm working on Windows. the utility i'm using, wget, is available for all desktop platforms and the command should be the same. you can use any text editor that will find/replace with regular expressions.

software used:
wget for Windows: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/wget.htm
you want the setup version.
notepad++: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/

1. Go to your photostream. Example: http://ironymaiden.livejournal.com/photo/


2. Open an album.


3. Click PUBLISH ALL TO ENTRY.


4. In the "Size of a pictures" dropdown, choose Original.


5. Click Insert Pictures.


6. Now all the pictures in the album are in a draft entry. (If you don't already see these as HTML code, click the HTML tab.)


7. Copy and paste the draft text into Notepad++.


8. Repeat the above until you have all of your albums.


9. Go to Search>Replace.


10. Select Wrap around and Regular expression.


11. Find <img src="


12. Replace with


13. Find " alt=".*" title=".*">


14. Replace with

This should get you a list of URLs that look like this: http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/ironymaiden/1176386/4463/4463_original.jpg


15. Save your text file into the folder with wget.exe.


16. Open cmd. (If you chose the default install location for wget, right-click cmd and choose Run as Administrator.)


17. Go to the folder with wget.exe: cd "c:\filepath\folderwithwget" (Windows is a butt about copying and pasting on the command line, but you can do it. Copy the filepath, right-click on the title bar of cmd to get a menu, then Edit>Paste.)


18. Now you should have a prompt that includes the path to the folder with your wget.


19. Enter this (with the name of your text file): wget -i text_file.txt

all the originals should download loose into the folder with wget and your text file.

Edited to add: if, like me, you used email posting for cell phone pictures, this page may provide some clues in tracking down entries using eljay hosting, when you're ready to replace links in your imported entries.

Comments

[sanguinity]

Here from the comment you left on dw_news, thank you so much! You saved me a lot of tedium.

I did this on a Mac, and had to troubleshoot my way through a number of details. If you don't mind me leaving some tips for the next person?

The asterisk in the search string is a wild-card, and TextEdit has no idea what to do with it. BBEdit is free and will parse that search string correctly; just make sure you tick the "Grep" option in the find/replace window.

Save the file of URLs anywhere that's convenient for you; it doesn't need to be anywhere in particular.

To install and use wget on OSX:

1. Open Terminal, and install Homebrew by copying-and-pasting the command at the top of this page;
   
2. Still in Terminal, copy-and-paste the first command at the top of this page (that is, c&p the bit after the $), hit return, and do it again with the second command. wget is now installed.
   
3. Still in Terminal, type in wget -i but do NOT hit return yet;
   
4. In the Finder, drag and drop the file with your URLs into the Terminal window (which should produce a filepath on the command line);
   
5. Go back to the Terminal window, and NOW hit return. Your photos/art will be downloaded somewhere-or-other. The filenames are in the Terminal window; Spotlight will help you find them. Mine were in my home directory.

[elusis]

Oh thank you both so much for this. Now I can delete my LJ for good - a sad end of an era, but I'm glad I could do it without consigning 17 years' worth of pics to the bit bucket.

[sanguinity]

I'm very glad that was helpful!

[armiphlage]

it's working! thank you

[fidget]

Hi there! I'm having a huge problem in that cmd is "unable to establish SSL connection." I've worked for like two hours on this (I'm absolutely not a programming-type person), and to finally get to the last step and have it not work is frustrating. Is there any way to fix this?

[ironymaiden]

hmm. I haven't been on eljay in months, so I'm taking a guess.
Take a look at your photo URLs. Do they have "http" in the beginning or "https"? Try changing one (add or remove the s) and then paste it into a web browser. If the photo loads, make that change in your text file and try the download.

[fidget]

It's working! You're the absolute best, italics and everything! Thank you for getting back to me so quickly, and double-super thanks for writing this guide in the first place.

[ironymaiden]

excellent, I'm glad it was that easy!