In this article, we will learn how to download Online articles as PDFs using python script.

Contents Close

Introduction:

Let’s create a PDF Downloader for online articles and make our lives a little bit easier using python.
Downloading articles as PDFs is very important and becomes handy in our day-to-day lives. Did anyone think about creating our own program to download articles as PDFs by ourselves?
and what if I tell you!! You can do the same things with the help of a simple python script.

Outline:

In this project, we will take the article link of any online article site like inprogrammer.com or GeeksForGeeks and give it as input for our python script and run it. After running the script we are redirected to the article link and the whole website will be saved as a PDF to our local PC.

Project Prerequisites:

You have to install only three packages in your system to run this script. Because we have to use the web driver in our project. We use Google Chrome as our browser for this project, make sure you have google chrome installed on your PC. We use the requests module to redirect to the respective website using the link provided as the input. We import the JSON module for our project.

selenium: Python language bindings for Selenium WebDriver.

The selenium package is used to automate web browser interaction from Python.

Home: https://selenium.dev

Docs: selenium package API

Dev: https://github.com/SeleniumHQ/Selenium

PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/selenium/

IRC: #selenium channel on LiberaChat

Several browsers/drivers are supported (Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer), as well as the Remote protocol.

Supported Python Versions:

Python 3.7+

to know more about selenium, refer to this link: https://pypi.org/project/selenium/

Code Implementation:

The first thing we need to do is to import the required packages and modules. In this project, we import thwebdriver, JSON module to make use of its functions. We will import webdriver from the selenium package and ChromeDriverManager from webdriver_manager.chrome.

from selenium import webdriver

from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager

import JSON

import requests

from selenium import webdriver
from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager
import JSON
import requests

Next, we will be defining a function called get_driver.In this function, we define settings as recentDestinations and define all the required parameters. At the end of the function, we return the browser object.

def get_driver():

# chrome options settings

chrome_options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()

settings = {

“recentDestinations”: [

{“id”: “Save as PDF”, “origin”: “local”, “account”: “”}

“selectedDestinationId”: “Save as PDF”,

“version”: 2,

}

prefs = {

“printing.print_preview_sticky_settings.appState”: json.dumps(settings)

}

chrome_options.add_experimental_option(“prefs”, prefs)

chrome_options.add_argument(“–kiosk-printing”)

# launch browser with predefined settings

browser = webdriver.Chrome(

executable_path=ChromeDriverManager().install(), options=chrome_options

)

return browser

def get_driver():
    # chrome options settings
    chrome_options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
    settings = {
        "recentDestinations": [
            {"id": "Save as PDF", "origin": "local", "account": ""}
        ],
        "selectedDestinationId": "Save as PDF",
        "version": 2,
    }
    prefs = {
        "printing.print_preview_sticky_settings.appState": json.dumps(settings)
    }
    chrome_options.add_experimental_option("prefs", prefs)
    chrome_options.add_argument("--kiosk-printing")

    # launch browser with predefined settings
    browser = webdriver.Chrome(
        executable_path=ChromeDriverManager().install(), options=chrome_options
    )
    return browser

In the next section, we define another function called download_article() and we will get the driver through the URL. We execute the script with a window. print() as its parameter. We close the browser at the end of the function.

def download_article(URL):

browser = get_driver()

browser.get(URL)

# launch print and save as pdf

browser.execute_script(“window.print();”)

browser.close()

def download_article(URL):
    browser = get_driver()
    browser.get(URL)

    # launch print and save as pdf
    browser.execute_script("window.print();")
    browser.close()

In the last section, we will start defining the main function, where we will take the input from the user. If the URL provided by the user is not valid, we will again prompt you to enter a valid URL.

if __name__ == “__main__”:

URL = input(“provide article URL: “)

# check if the url is valid/reachable

if requests.get(URL).status_code == 200:

try:

download_article(URL)

print(“Your article is successfully downloaded”)

except Exception as e:

print(e)

else:

print(“Enter a valid working URL”)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    URL = input("provide article URL: ")
    # check if the url is valid/reachable
    if requests.get(URL).status_code == 200:
        try:
            download_article(URL)
            print("Your article is successfully downloaded")
        except Exception as e:
            print(e)
    else:
        print("Enter a valid working URL")

Yes. We have now completed the code implementation.

Sourcen Code:

Here is the complete source code of the project.

# !/usr/bin/env python
from selenium import webdriver
from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager
import json
import requests


# article url
# URL = "https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/what-can-i-do-with-python/"


def get_driver():
    # chrome options settings
    chrome_options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
    settings = {
        "recentDestinations": [
            {"id": "Save as PDF", "origin": "local", "account": ""}
        ],
        "selectedDestinationId": "Save as PDF",
        "version": 2,
    }
    prefs = {
        "printing.print_preview_sticky_settings.appState": json.dumps(settings)
    }
    chrome_options.add_experimental_option("prefs", prefs)
    chrome_options.add_argument("--kiosk-printing")

    # launch browser with predefined settings
    browser = webdriver.Chrome(
        executable_path=ChromeDriverManager().install(), options=chrome_options
    )
    return browser


def download_article(URL):
    browser = get_driver()
    browser.get(URL)

    # launch print and save as pdf
    browser.execute_script("window.print();")
    browser.close()


if __name__ == "__main__":
    URL = input("provide article URL: ")
    # check if the url is valid/reachable
    if requests.get(URL).status_code == 200:
        try:
            download_article(URL)
            print("Your article is successfully downloaded")
        except Exception as e:
            print(e)
    else:
        print("Enter a valid working URL")

As we have completed the project, let us check the output.

Output:

After running the above-given command, it will prompt you to enter the URL of the article.

In this example I will enter the URLs of inprogrammer.com article and GFG article.

After running the source code, a new window will appear like the following:

These are the screenshots of the output after running the script.

Alright, Congratulations! We have successfully learned how to create a PDF downloader for online articles using python.

Important Note:

If you still did not get the output correctly/article is not downloaded as PDF, refer to the documentation of the packages. Drop your issues as the comments below.

Go to the documentation of the packages: selenium, webdriver_manager, and requests package to know more about them.
Happy Coding.

Thank You!
By UdaySk

Download Online articles as PDFs | Python

Introduction:

Outline:

Project Prerequisites:

Code Implementation:

Sourcen Code:

Output:

Important Note:

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Ads Blocker Detected!!!

Introduction:

Outline:

Project Prerequisites:

Code Implementation:

Sourcen Code:

Output:

Important Note:

Post You May Also Like:

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Ads Blocker Detected!!!