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README.md

ArchiveBox
Open-source self-hosted web archiving.


▶️ Quickstart | Demo | GitHub | Documentation | Info & Motivation | Community


   


ArchiveBox is a powerful, self-hosted internet archiving solution to collect, save, and view websites offline.

Without active preservation effort, everything on the internet eventually disappears or degrades. Archive.org does a great job as a centralized service, but saved URLs have to be public, and they can't save every type of content.

ArchiveBox is an open source tool that lets organizations & individuals archive both public & private web content while retaining control over their data. It can be used to save copies of bookmarks, preserve evidence for legal cases, backup photos from FB/Insta/Flickr or media from YT/Soundcloud/etc., save research papers, and more...

➡️ Get ArchiveBox with pip install archivebox on Linux, macOS, and Windows (WSL2), or via Docker ⭐️.

Once installed, it can be used as a CLI tool, self-hosted Web App, Python library, or one-off command.



📥 You can feed ArchiveBox URLs one at a time, or schedule regular imports from your bookmarks or history, social media feeds or RSS, link-saving services like Pocket/Pinboard, our Browser Extension, and more.
See Input Formats for a full list of supported input formats...


snapshot detail page

It saves snapshots of the URLs you feed it in several redundant formats.
It also detects any content featured inside pages & extracts it out into a folder:

  • 🌐 HTML/Any websites ➡️ original HTML+CSS+JS, singlefile HTML, screenshot PNG, PDF, WARC, title, article text, favicon, headers, ...
  • 🎥 Social Media/News ➡️ post content TXT, comments, title, author, images, ...
  • 🎬 YouTube/SoundCloud/etc. ➡️ MP3/MP4s, subtitles, metadata, thumbnail, ...
  • 💾 Github/Gitlab/etc. links ➡️ clone of GIT source code, README, images, ...
  • ✨ and more, see Output Formats below...

You can run ArchiveBox as a Docker web app to manage these snapshots, or continue accessing the same collection using the pip-installed CLI, Python API, and SQLite3 APIs. All the ways of using it are equivalent, and provide matching features like adding tags, scheduling regular crawls, viewing logs, and more...


🛠️ ArchiveBox uses standard tools like Chrome, wget, & yt-dlp, and stores data in ordinary files & folders.
(no complex proprietary formats, all data is readable without needing to run ArchiveBox)

The goal is to sleep soundly knowing the part of the internet you care about will be automatically preserved in durable, easily accessible formats for decades after it goes down.


📦  Install ArchiveBox using your preferred method: docker / pip / apt / etc. (see full Quickstart below).

  Expand for quick copy-pastable install commands...   ⤵️ 
# Option A: Get ArchiveBox with Docker Compose (recommended):
mkdir -p ~/archivebox/data && cd ~/archivebox
curl -fsSL 'https://docker-compose.archivebox.io' > docker-compose.yml   # edit options in this file as-needed
docker compose run archivebox init --setup
# docker compose run archivebox add 'https://example.com'
# docker compose run archivebox help
# docker compose up




# Option B: Or use it as a plain Docker container:
mkdir -p ~/archivebox/data && cd ~/archivebox/data
docker run -it -v $PWD:/data archivebox/archivebox init --setup
# docker run -it -v $PWD:/data archivebox/archivebox add 'https://example.com'
# docker run -it -v $PWD:/data archivebox/archivebox help
# docker run -it -v $PWD:/data -p 8000:8000 archivebox/archivebox




# Option C: Or install it with your preferred pkg manager (see Quickstart below for apt, brew, and more)
pip install archivebox
mkdir -p ~/archivebox/data && cd ~/archivebox/data
archivebox init --setup
# archivebox add 'https://example.com'
# archivebox help
# archivebox server 0.0.0.0:8000




# Option D: Or use the optional auto setup script to install it
curl -fsSL 'https://get.archivebox.io' | sh

Open http://localhost:8000 to see your server's Web UI ➡️



bookshelf graphic   logo   bookshelf graphic

Demo | Screenshots | Usage
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

cli init screenshot cli init screenshot server snapshot admin screenshot server snapshot details page screenshot

Key Features


🤝 Professional Integration

ArchiveBox is free for everyone to self-host, but we also provide support, security review, and custom integrations to help NGOs, governments, and other organizations run ArchiveBox professionally:

  • Journalists: crawling during research, preserving cited pages, fact-checking & review
  • Lawyers: collecting & preserving evidence, detecting changes, tagging & review
  • Researchers: analyzing social media trends, getting LLM training data, crawling pipelines
  • Individuals: saving bookmarks, preserving portfolio content, legacy / memoirs archival
  • Governments: snapshoting public service sites, recordkeeping compliance

Contact us if your org wants help using ArchiveBox professionally. (we are also seeking grant funding)
We offer: setup & support, CAPTCHA/ratelimit unblocking, SSO, audit logging/chain-of-custody, and more
ArchiveBox is a 🏛️ 501(c)(3) nonprofit FSP and all our work supports open-source development.



grassgrass

Quickstart

🖥  Supported OSs: Linux/BSD, macOS, Windows (Docker)   👾  CPUs: amd64 (x86_64), arm64, arm7 (raspi>=3)


✳️  Easy Setup

Docker docker-compose (macOS/Linux/Windows)   👈  recommended   (click to expand)
👍 Docker Compose is recommended for the easiest install/update UX + best security + all extras out-of-the-box.

  1. Install Docker on your system (if not already installed).
  2. Download the docker-compose.yml file into a new empty directory (can be anywhere). 
    mkdir -p ~/archivebox/data && cd ~/archivebox
# Read and edit docker-compose.yml options as-needed after downloading
curl -fsSL 'https://docker-compose.archivebox.io' > docker-compose.yml
  3. Run the initial setup to create an admin user (or set ADMIN_USER/PASS in docker-compose.yml) 
    docker compose run archivebox init --setup
  4. Next steps: Start the server then login to the Web UI http://127.0.0.1:8000 ⇢ Admin. 
    docker compose up
# completely optional, CLI can always be used without running a server
# docker compose run [-T] archivebox [subcommand] [--help]
docker compose run archivebox add 'https://example.com'
docker compose run archivebox help
    For more info, see Install: Docker Compose in the Wiki. ➡️

See below for more usage examples using the CLI, Web UI, or filesystem/SQL/Python to manage your archive.

Docker docker run (macOS/Linux/Windows)
  1. Install Docker on your system (if not already installed).
  2. Create a new empty directory and initialize your collection (can be anywhere). 
    mkdir -p ~/archivebox/data && cd ~/archivebox/data
docker run -v $PWD:/data -it archivebox/archivebox init --setup
  3. Optional: Start the server then login to the Web UI http://127.0.0.1:8000 ⇢ Admin. 
    docker run -v $PWD:/data -p 8000:8000 archivebox/archivebox
# completely optional, CLI can always be used without running a server
# docker run -v $PWD:/data -it [subcommand] [--help]
docker run -v $PWD:/data -it archivebox/archivebox help
    For more info, see Install: Docker Compose in the Wiki. ➡️

See below for more usage examples using the CLI, Web UI, or filesystem/SQL/Python to manage your archive.

curl sh automatic setup script bash auto-setup script (macOS/Linux)
  1. Install Docker on your system (optional, highly recommended but not required).
  2. Run the automatic setup script. 
    curl -fsSL 'https://get.archivebox.io' | sh
    For more info, see Install: Bare Metal in the Wiki. ➡️

See below for more usage examples using the CLI, Web UI, or filesystem/SQL/Python to manage your archive.
See setup.sh for the source code of the auto-install script.
See "Against curl | sh as an install method" blog post for my thoughts on the shortcomings of this install method.


🛠  Package Manager Setup

Pip pip (macOS/Linux/BSD)
  1. Install Python >= v3.10 and Node >= v18 on your system (if not already installed).
  2. Install the ArchiveBox package using pip3 (or pipx). 
    pip3 install --upgrade archivebox yt-dlp playwright
playwright install --with-deps chromium
archivebox version
# install any missing extras shown using apt/brew/pkg/etc. see Wiki for instructions
#    python@3.10 node curl wget git ripgrep ...
    See the Install: Bare Metal Wiki for full install instructions for each OS...
  3. Create a new empty directory and initialize your collection (can be anywhere). 
    mkdir -p ~/archivebox/data && cd ~/archivebox/data   # for example
archivebox init --setup   # instantialize a new collection
# (--setup auto-installs and link JS dependencies: singlefile, readability, mercury, etc.)
  4. Optional: Start the server then login to the Web UI http://127.0.0.1:8000 ⇢ Admin. 
    archivebox server 0.0.0.0:8000
# completely optional, CLI can always be used without running a server
# archivebox [subcommand] [--help]
archivebox help

See below for more usage examples using the CLI, Web UI, or filesystem/SQL/Python to manage your archive.

See the pip-archivebox repo for more details about this distribution.

aptitude apt (Ubuntu/Debian/etc.)
See the Install: Bare Metal Wiki for instructions. ➡️

homebrew brew (macOS only)
  1. Install Homebrew on your system (if not already installed).
  2. Install the ArchiveBox package using brew. 
    brew tap archivebox/archivebox
brew install archivebox
# update to newest version with pip (sometimes brew package is outdated)
pip install --upgrade --ignore-installed archivebox yt-dlp playwright
playwright install --with-deps chromium    # install chromium and its system dependencies
archivebox version                         # make sure all dependencies are installed
    See the Install: Bare Metal Wiki for more granular instructions for macOS... ➡️
  3. Create a new empty directory and initialize your collection (can be anywhere). 
    mkdir -p ~/archivebox/data && cd ~/archivebox/data
archivebox init --setup
  4. Optional: Start the server then login to the Web UI http://127.0.0.1:8000 ⇢ Admin. 
    archivebox server 0.0.0.0:8000
# completely optional, CLI can always be used without running a server
# archivebox [subcommand] [--help]
archivebox help

See below for more usage examples using the CLI, Web UI, or filesystem/SQL/Python to manage your archive.
See the homebrew-archivebox repo for more details about this distribution.

Arch pacman / FreeBSD pkg / Nix nix (Arch/FreeBSD/NixOS/more)

Warning: These are contributed by external volunteers and may lag behind the official pip channel.

See below for usage examples using the CLI, Web UI, or filesystem/SQL/Python to manage your archive.


🎗  Other Options

Docker docker + Electron electron Desktop App (macOS/Linux/Windows)
  1. Install Docker on your system (if not already installed).
  2. Download a binary release for your OS or build the native app from source

✨ Alpha (contributors wanted!): for more info, see the: Electron ArchiveBox repo.
Self-hosting Platforms TrueNAS / UNRAID / YunoHost / Cloudron / etc. (self-hosting solutions)

Warning: These are contributed by external volunteers and may lag behind the official pip channel.

See below for usage examples using the CLI, Web UI, or filesystem/SQL/Python to manage your archive.

paid Paid hosting solutions (cloud VPS)

For more discussion on managed and paid hosting options see here: Issue #531.


➡️  Next Steps


Usage

⚡️  CLI Usage

ArchiveBox commands can be run in a terminal directly on your host, or via Docker/Docker Compose.
(depending on how you chose to install it above)

mkdir -p ~/archivebox/data   # create a new data dir anywhere
cd ~/archivebox/data         # IMPORTANT: cd into the directory

# archivebox [subcommand] [--help]
archivebox version
archivebox help

# equivalent: docker compose run archivebox [subcommand] [--help]
docker compose run archivebox help

# equivalent: docker run -it -v $PWD:/data archivebox/archivebox [subcommand] [--help]
docker run -it -v $PWD:/data archivebox/archivebox help

ArchiveBox Subcommands

  • archivebox help/version to see the list of available subcommands / currently installed version info
  • archivebox setup/init/config/status/shell/manage to administer your collection
  • archivebox add/oneshot/schedule to pull in fresh URLs from bookmarks/history/RSS/etc.
  • archivebox list/update/remove to manage existing Snapshots in your collection

curl sh automatic setup script CLI Usage Examples: non-Docker 

# make sure you have pip-installed ArchiveBox and it's available in your $PATH first  


# archivebox [subcommand] [--help]
archivebox init --setup      # safe to run init multiple times (also how you update versions)
archivebox version           # get archivebox version info + check dependencies
archivebox help              # get list of archivebox subcommands that can be run
archivebox add --depth=1 'https://news.ycombinator.com'
For more info, see our Usage: CLI Usage wiki. ➡️

Docker CLI Usage Examples: Docker Compose 

# make sure you have `docker-compose.yml` from the Quickstart instructions first


# docker compose run archivebox [subcommand] [--help]
docker compose run archivebox init --setup
docker compose run archivebox version
docker compose run archivebox help
docker compose run archivebox add --depth=1 'https://news.ycombinator.com'
# to start webserver: docker compose up
For more info, see our Usage: Docker Compose CLI wiki. ➡️

Docker CLI Usage Examples: Docker 

# make sure you create and cd into in a new empty directory first  


# docker run -it -v $PWD:/data archivebox/archivebox [subcommand] [--help]
docker run -v $PWD:/data -it archivebox/archivebox init --setup
docker run -v $PWD:/data -it archivebox/archivebox version
docker run -v $PWD:/data -it archivebox/archivebox help
docker run -v $PWD:/data -it archivebox/archivebox add --depth=1 'https://news.ycombinator.com'
# to start webserver: docker run -v $PWD:/data -it -p 8000:8000 archivebox/archivebox
For more info, see our Usage: Docker CLI wiki. ➡️

🗄  SQL/Python/Filesystem Usage 

archivebox shell           # explore the Python library API in a REPL
sqlite3 ./index.sqlite3    # run SQL queries directly on your index
ls ./archive/*/index.html  # or inspect snapshot data directly on the filesystem
For more info, see our Python Shell, SQL API, and Disk Layout wikis. ➡️

🖥  Web UI & API Usage 

# Start the server on bare metal (pip/apt/brew/etc):
archivebox manage createsuperuser              # create a new admin user via CLI
archivebox server 0.0.0.0:8000                 # start the server


# Or with Docker Compose:
nano docker-compose.yml                        # setup initial ADMIN_USERNAME & ADMIN_PASSWORD
docker compose up                              # start the server


# Or with a Docker container:
docker run -v $PWD:/data -it archivebox/archivebox archivebox manage createsuperuser
docker run -v $PWD:/data -it -p 8000:8000 archivebox/archivebox

Open http://localhost:8000 to see your server's Web UI ➡️

For more info, see our Usage: Web UI wiki. ➡️

Optional: Change permissions to allow non-logged-in users


archivebox config --set PUBLIC_ADD_VIEW=True   # allow guests to submit URLs 
archivebox config --set PUBLIC_SNAPSHOTS=True  # allow guests to see snapshot content
archivebox config --set PUBLIC_INDEX=True      # allow guests to see list of all snapshots
# or
docker compose run archivebox config --set ...

# restart the server to apply any config changes


Tip

Whether in Docker or not, ArchiveBox commands work the same way, and can be used to access the same data on-disk. For example, you could run the Web UI in Docker Compose, and run one-off commands with pip-installed ArchiveBox.

Expand to show comparison...

archivebox add --depth=1 'https://example.com'                     # add a URL with pip-installed archivebox on the host
docker compose run archivebox add --depth=1 'https://example.com'                       # or w/ Docker Compose
docker run -it -v $PWD:/data archivebox/archivebox add --depth=1 'https://example.com'  # or w/ Docker, all equivalent

For more info, see our Docker wiki. ➡️


grassgrass

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

DEMO: https://demo.archivebox.io
Usage | Configuration | Caveats

lego

Overview

Input Formats: How to pass URLs into ArchiveBox for saving

# archivebox add --help
archivebox add 'https://example.com/some/page'
archivebox add --parser=generic_rss < ~/Downloads/some_feed.xml
archivebox add --depth=1 'https://news.ycombinator.com#2020-12-12'
echo 'http://example.com' | archivebox add
echo 'any text with <a href="https://example.com">urls</a> in it' | archivebox add

# if using Docker, add -i when piping stdin:
# echo 'https://example.com' | docker run -v $PWD:/data -i archivebox/archivebox add
# if using Docker Compose, add -T when piping stdin / stdout:
# echo 'https://example.com' | docker compose run -T archivebox add

See the Usage: CLI page for documentation and examples.

It also includes a built-in scheduled import feature with archivebox schedule and browser bookmarklet, so you can pull in URLs from RSS feeds, websites, or the filesystem regularly/on-demand.


Output Formats: What ArchiveBox saves for each URL

For each web page added, ArchiveBox creates a Snapshot folder and preserves its content as ordinary files inside the folder (e.g. HTML, PDF, PNG, JSON, etc.).

It uses all available methods out-of-the-box, but you can disable extractors and fine-tune the configuration as-needed.


Expand to see the full list of ways it saves each page...

data/archive/{Snapshot.id}/

  • Index: index.html & index.json HTML and JSON index files containing metadata and details
  • Title, Favicon, Headers Response headers, site favicon, and parsed site title
  • SingleFile: singlefile.html HTML snapshot rendered with headless Chrome using SingleFile
  • Wget Clone: example.com/page-name.html wget clone of the site with warc/TIMESTAMP.gz
  • Chrome Headless
    • PDF: output.pdf Printed PDF of site using headless chrome
    • Screenshot: screenshot.png 1440x900 screenshot of site using headless chrome
    • DOM Dump: output.html DOM Dump of the HTML after rendering using headless chrome
  • Article Text: article.html/json Article text extraction using Readability & Mercury
  • Archive.org Permalink: archive.org.txt A link to the saved site on archive.org
  • Audio & Video: media/ all audio/video files + playlists, including subtitles & metadata w/ yt-dlp
  • Source Code: git/ clone of any repository found on GitHub, Bitbucket, or GitLab links
  • More coming soon! See the Roadmap...

Configuration

ArchiveBox can be configured via environment variables, by using the archivebox config CLI, or by editing ./ArchiveBox.conf.

Expand to see examples... 
archivebox config                               # view the entire config
archivebox config --get CHROME_BINARY           # view a specific value


archivebox config --set CHROME_BINARY=chromium  # persist a config using CLI
# OR
echo CHROME_BINARY=chromium >> ArchiveBox.conf  # persist a config using file
# OR
env CHROME_BINARY=chromium archivebox ...       # run with a one-off config
These methods also work the same way when run inside Docker, see the Docker Configuration wiki page for details.

The configuration is documented here: Configuration Wiki, and loaded here: archivebox/config.py.

Expand to see the most common options to tweak... 

# e.g. archivebox config --set TIMEOUT=120
# or   docker compose run archivebox config --set TIMEOUT=120


TIMEOUT=240                # default: 60    add more seconds on slower networks
CHECK_SSL_VALIDITY=False   # default: True  False = allow saving URLs w/ bad SSL
SAVE_ARCHIVE_DOT_ORG=False # default: True  False = disable Archive.org saving
MAX_MEDIA_SIZE=1500m       # default: 750m  raise/lower youtubedl output size


PUBLIC_INDEX=True          # default: True  whether anon users can view index
PUBLIC_SNAPSHOTS=True      # default: True  whether anon users can view pages
PUBLIC_ADD_VIEW=False      # default: False whether anon users can add new URLs


CHROME_USER_AGENT="Mozilla/5.0 ..."  # change these to get around bot blocking
WGET_USER_AGENT="Mozilla/5.0 ..."
CURL_USER_AGENT="Mozilla/5.0 ..."

Dependencies

To achieve high-fidelity archives in as many situations as possible, ArchiveBox depends on a variety of 3rd-party libraries and tools that specialize in extracting different types of content.

Under-the-hood, ArchiveBox uses Django to power its Web UI, Django Ninja for the REST API, and SQlite + the filesystem to provide fast & durable metadata storage w/ deterministic upgrades.

ArchiveBox bundles industry-standard tools like Google Chrome, wget, yt-dlp, readability, etc. internally, and its operation can be tuned, secured, and extended as-needed for many different applications.


Expand to learn more about ArchiveBox's internals & dependencies...

TIP: For better security while running ArchiveBox, and to avoid polluting your host system with a bunch of sub-dependencies that you need to keep up-to-date,it is strongly recommended to use the ⭐️ official Docker image which provides everything in an easy container with simple one-liner upgrades.

  • Language: Python >=3.10
  • Backend: Django + Django-Ninja for REST API
  • Frontend: Django Admin + Vanilla HTML, CSS, JS
  • Web Server: Django + channels + daphne]
  • Database: Django ORM saving to SQLite3 ./data/index.sqlite
  • Job Queue: Huey using ./data/queue.sqlite3 under supervisord
  • Build/test/lint: pdm / mypy+pyright+pytest / ruff
  • Subdependencies: pydantic-pkgr installs apt/brew/pip/npm pkgs at runtime (e.g. yt-dlp, singlefile, readability, git)

These optional subdependencies used for archiving sites include:

archivebox --version CLI output screenshot showing dependencies installed
  • chromium / chrome (for screenshots, PDF, DOM HTML, and headless JS scripts)
  • node & npm (for readability, mercury, and singlefile)
  • wget (for plain HTML, static files, and WARC saving)
  • curl (for fetching headers, favicon, and posting to Archive.org)
  • yt-dlp or youtube-dl (for audio, video, and subtitles)
  • git (for cloning git repos)
  • singlefile (for saving into a self-contained html file)
  • postlight/parser (for discussion threads, forums, and articles)
  • readability (for articles and long text content)
  • and more as we grow...

You don't need to install every dependency to use ArchiveBox. ArchiveBox will automatically disable extractors that rely on dependencies that aren't installed, based on what is configured and available in your $PATH.

If not using Docker, make sure to keep the dependencies up-to-date yourself and check that ArchiveBox isn't reporting any incompatibility with the versions you install.

#install python3 and archivebox with your system package manager
# apt/brew/pip/etc install ... (see Quickstart instructions above)


which -a archivebox    # see where you have installed archivebox
archivebox setup       # auto install all the extractors and extras
archivebox --version   # see info and check validity of installed dependencies

Installing directly on Windows without Docker or WSL/WSL2/Cygwin is not officially supported (I cannot respond to Windows support tickets), but some advanced users have reported getting it working.

Learn More


Archive Layout

All of ArchiveBox's state (SQLite DB, content, config, logs, etc.) is stored in a single folder per collection.


Expand to learn more about the layout of Archivebox's data on-disk...

Data folders can be created anywhere (~/archivebox/data or $PWD/data as seen in our examples), and you can create as many data folders as you want to hold different collections. All archivebox CLI commands are designed to be run from inside an ArchiveBox data folder, starting with archivebox init to initialize a new collection inside an empty directory.

mkdir -p ~/archivebox/data && cd ~/archivebox/data   # just an example, can be anywhere
archivebox init

The on-disk layout is optimized to be easy to browse by hand and durable long-term. The main index is a standard index.sqlite3 database in the root of the data folder (it can also be exported as static JSON/HTML), and the archive snapshots are organized by date-added timestamp in the data/archive/ subfolder.

data/
    index.sqlite3
    ArchiveBox.conf
    archive/
        ...
        1617687755/
            index.html
            index.json
            screenshot.png
            media/some_video.mp4
            warc/1617687755.warc.gz
            git/somerepo.git
            ...

Each snapshot subfolder data/archive/TIMESTAMP/ includes a static index.json and index.html describing its contents, and the snapshot extractor outputs are plain files within the folder.

Learn More


Static Archive Exporting

You can create one-off archives of individual URLs with archivebox oneshot, or export your index as static HTML using archivebox list (so you can view it without an ArchiveBox server).


Expand to learn how to export your ArchiveBox collection...

NOTE: These exports are not paginated, exporting many URLs or the entire archive at once may be slow. Use the filtering CLI flags on the archivebox list command to export specific Snapshots or ranges.

# do a one-off single URL archive wihout needing a data dir initialized
archivebox oneshot 'https://example.com'

# archivebox list --help
archivebox list --html --with-headers > index.html     # export to static html table
archivebox list --json --with-headers > index.json     # export to json blob
archivebox list --csv=timestamp,url,title > index.csv  # export to csv spreadsheet

# (if using Docker Compose, add the -T flag when piping)
# docker compose run -T archivebox list --html 'https://example.com' > index.json

The paths in the static exports are relative, make sure to keep them next to your ./archive folder when backing them up or viewing them.

Learn More


security graphic

Caveats

Archiving Private Content

If you're importing pages with private content or URLs containing secret tokens you don't want public (e.g Google Docs, paywalled content, unlisted videos, etc.), you may want to disable some of the extractor methods to avoid leaking that content to 3rd party APIs or the public.


Expand to learn about privacy, permissions, and user accounts... 
# don't save private content to ArchiveBox, e.g.:
archivebox add 'https://docs.google.com/document/d/12345somePrivateDocument'
archivebox add 'https://vimeo.com/somePrivateVideo'

# without first disabling saving to Archive.org:
archivebox config --set SAVE_ARCHIVE_DOT_ORG=False  # disable saving all URLs in Archive.org

# restrict the main index, Snapshot content, and Add Page to authenticated users as-needed:
archivebox config --set PUBLIC_INDEX=False
archivebox config --set PUBLIC_SNAPSHOTS=False
archivebox config --set PUBLIC_ADD_VIEW=False 
archivebox manage createsuperuser

# if extra paranoid or anti-Google:
archivebox config --set SAVE_FAVICON=False          # disable favicon fetching (it calls a Google API passing the URL's domain part only)
archivebox config --set CHROME_BINARY=chromium      # ensure it's using Chromium instead of Chrome

CAUTION: Assume anyone viewing your archives will be able to see any cookies, session tokens, or private URLs passed to ArchiveBox during archiving. Make sure to secure your ArchiveBox data and don't share snapshots with others without stripping out sensitive headers and content first.

Learn More


Security Risks of Viewing Archived JS

Be aware that malicious archived JS can access the contents of other pages in your archive when viewed. Because the Web UI serves all viewed snapshots from a single domain, they share a request context and typical CSRF/CORS/XSS/CSP protections do not work to prevent cross-site request attacks. See the Security Overview page and Issue #239 for more details.


Expand to see risks and mitigations... 
# visiting an archived page with malicious JS:
https://127.0.0.1:8000/archive/1602401954/example.com/index.html

# example.com/index.js can now make a request to read everything from:
https://127.0.0.1:8000/index.html
https://127.0.0.1:8000/archive/*
# then example.com/index.js can send it off to some evil server

NOTE: Only the wget & dom extractor methods execute archived JS when viewing snapshots, all other archive methods produce static output that does not execute JS on viewing.
If you are worried about these issues ^ you should disable these extractors using:
archivebox config --set SAVE_WGET=False SAVE_DOM=False.

Learn More


Working Around Sites that Block Archiving

For various reasons, many large sites (Reddit, Twitter, Cloudflare, etc.) actively block archiving or bots in general. There are a number of approaches to work around this, and we also provide consulting services to help here.


Click to learn how to set up user agents, cookies, and site logins...

In the future we plan on adding support for running JS scripts during archiving to block ads, cookie popups, modals, and fix other issues. Follow here for progress: Issue #51.


Saving Multiple Snapshots of a Single URL

ArchiveBox appends a hash with the current date https://example.com#2020-10-24 to differentiate when a single URL is archived multiple times.


Click to learn how the Re-Snapshot feature works...

Because ArchiveBox uniquely identifies snapshots by URL, it must use a workaround to take multiple snapshots of the same URL (otherwise they would show up as a single Snapshot entry). It makes the URLs of repeated snapshots unique by adding a hash with the archive date at the end:

archivebox add 'https://example.com#2020-10-24'
...
archivebox add 'https://example.com#2020-10-25'

The Re-Snapshot Button button in the Admin UI is a shortcut for this hash-date multi-snapshotting workaround.

Improved support for saving multiple snapshots of a single URL without this hash-date workaround will be added eventually (along with the ability to view diffs of the changes between runs).

Learn More


Storage Requirements

Because ArchiveBox is designed to ingest a large volume of URLs with multiple copies of each URL stored by different 3rd-party tools, it can be quite disk-space intensive. There are also some special requirements when using filesystems like NFS/SMB/FUSE.


Click to learn more about ArchiveBox's filesystem and hosting requirements...
  • ArchiveBox can use anywhere from ~1gb per 1000 Snapshots, to ~50gb per 1000 Snapshots, mostly dependent on whether you're saving audio & video using SAVE_MEDIA=True and whether you lower MEDIA_MAX_SIZE=750mb.
  • Disk usage can be reduced by using a compressed/deduplicated filesystem like ZFS/BTRFS, or by turning off extractors methods you don't need. You can also deduplicate content with a tool like fdupes or rdfind.
  • Don't store large collections on older filesystems like EXT3/FAT as they may not be able to handle more than 50k directory entries in the data/archive/ folder.
  • Try to keep the data/index.sqlite3 file on local drive (not a network mount) or SSD for maximum performance, however the data/archive/ folder can be on a network mount or slower HDD.
  • If using Docker or NFS/SMB/FUSE for the data/archive/ folder, you may need to set PUID & PGID and disable root_squash on your fileshare server.

Learn More



Screenshots

brew install archivebox
archivebox version 		archivebox init
 archivebox add archivebox data dir
archivebox server archivebox server add archivebox server list archivebox server detail


paisley graphic

Background & Motivation

ArchiveBox aims to enable more of the internet to be saved from deterioration by empowering people to self-host their own archives. The intent is for all the web content you care about to be viewable with common software in 50 - 100 years without needing to run ArchiveBox or other specialized software to replay it.


Click to read more about why archiving is important and how to do it ethically...

Vast treasure troves of knowledge are lost every day on the internet to link rot. As a society, we have an imperative to preserve some important parts of that treasure, just like we preserve our books, paintings, and music in physical libraries long after the originals go out of print or fade into obscurity.

Whether it's to resist censorship by saving news articles before they get taken down or edited, or just to save a collection of early 2010's flash games you loved to play, having the tools to archive internet content enables to you save the stuff you care most about before it disappears.


Image from Perma.cc...

The balance between the permanence and ephemeral nature of content on the internet is part of what makes it beautiful. I don't think everything should be preserved in an automated fashion--making all content permanent and never removable, but I do think people should be able to decide for themselves and effectively archive specific content that they care about, just like libraries do. Without the work of archivists saving physical books, manuscrips, and paintings we wouldn't have any knowledge of our ancestors' history. I believe archiving the web is just as important to provide the same benefit to future generations.

ArchiveBox's stance is that duplication of other people's content is only ethical if it:

  • A. doesn't deprive the original creators of revenue and
  • B. is responsibly curated by an individual/institution.

In the U.S., libraries, researchers, and archivists are allowed to duplicate copyrighted materials under "fair use" for private study, scholarship, or research. Archive.org's non-profit preservation work is covered under fair use in the US, and they properly handle unethical content/DMCA/GDPR removal requests to maintain good standing in the eyes of the law.

As long as you A. don't try to profit off pirating copyrighted content and B. have processes in place to respond to removal requests, many countries allow you to use sofware like ArchiveBox to ethically and responsibly archive any web content you can view. That being said, ArchiveBox is not liable for how you choose to operate the software. You must research your own local laws and regulations, and get proper legal council if you plan to host a public instance (start by putting your DMCA/GDPR contact info in FOOTER_INFO and changing your instance's branding using CUSTOM_TEMPLATES_DIR).


Comparison to Other Projects

comparison

Check out our community wiki for a list of alternative web archiving tools and orgs.

ArchiveBox gained momentum in the internet archiving industry because it uniquely combines 3 things:

  • it's distributed: users own their data instead of entrusting it to one big central provider
  • it's future-proof: saving in multiple formats and extracting out raw TXT, PNG, PDF, MP4, etc. files
  • it's extensible: with powerful APIs, flexible storage, and a big community adding new extractors regularly

Expand for a more direct comparison to Archive.org and specific open-source alternatives...

ArchiveBox tries to be a robust, set-and-forget archiving solution suitable for archiving RSS feeds, bookmarks, or your entire browsing history (beware, it may be too big to store), including private/authenticated content that you wouldn't otherwise share with a centralized service like Archive.org.

Comparison With Centralized Public Archives

Not all content is suitable to be archived on a centralized, publicly accessible platform. Archive.org doesn't offer the ability to save things behind login walls for good reason, as the content may not have been intended for a public audience. ArchiveBox exists to fill that gap by letting everyone save what they have access to on an individual basis, and to encourage decentralized archiving that's less succeptible to censorship or natural disasters.

By having users store their content locally or within their organizations, we can also save much larger portions of the internet than a centralized service has the disk capcity handle. The eventual goal is to work towards federated archiving where users can share portions of their collections with each other, and with central archives on a case-by-case basis.

Comparison With Other Self-Hosted Archiving Options

ArchiveBox differentiates itself from similar self-hosted projects by providing both a comprehensive CLI interface for managing your archive, a Web UI that can be used either independently or together with the CLI, and a simple on-disk data format that can be used without either.

If you want better fidelity for very complex interactive pages with heavy JS/streams/API requests, check out ArchiveWeb.page and ReplayWeb.page.

If you want more bookmark categorization and note-taking features, check out Archivy, Memex, Polar, or LinkAce.

If you need more advanced recursive spider/crawling ability beyond --depth=1, check out Browsertrix, Photon, or Scrapy and pipe the outputted URLs into ArchiveBox.

For more alternatives, see our list here...

ArchiveBox is neither the highest fidelity nor the simplest tool available for self-hosted archiving, rather it's a jack-of-all-trades that tries to do most things well by default. We encourage you to try these other tools made by our friends if ArchiveBox isn't suited to your needs.


Internet Archiving Ecosystem

Our Community Wiki strives to be a comprehensive index of the web archiving industry...

Need help building a custom archiving solution?

✨ Hire the team that built Archivebox to solve archiving for your org. (@ArchiveBoxApp)


documentation graphic

Documentation

We use the ArchiveBox GitHub Wiki for documentation.

There is also a mirror available on Read the Docs (though it's sometimes outdated).

✏️ You can submit docs changes & suggestions in our dedicated repo ArchiveBox/docs.

Getting Started

Advanced

Developers

More Info


development

ArchiveBox Development

All contributions to ArchiveBox are welcomed! Check our issues and Roadmap for things to work on, and please open an issue to discuss your proposed implementation before working on things! Otherwise we may have to close your PR if it doesn't align with our roadmap.

For low hanging fruit / easy first tickets, see: ArchiveBox/Issues #good first ticket #help wanted.

Python API Documentation: https://docs.archivebox.io/en/dev/archivebox.html#module-archivebox.main

Setup the dev environment

Click to expand...

1. Clone the main code repo (making sure to pull the submodules as well)

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox
cd ArchiveBox
git checkout dev  # or the branch you want to test
git submodule update --init --recursive
git pull --recurse-submodules

2. Option A: Install the Python, JS, and system dependencies directly on your machine

# Install ArchiveBox + python dependencies
pip install uv
uv venv
uv sync

archivebox init
archivebox install

2. Option B: Build the docker container and use that for development instead

# Optional: develop via docker by mounting the code dir into the container
# if you edit e.g. ./archivebox/core/models.py on the docker host, runserver
# inside the container will reload and pick up your changes
docker build . -t archivebox
docker run -it \
    -v $PWD/data:/data \
    archivebox init --setup
docker run -it -p 8000:8000 \
    -v $PWD/data:/data \
    -v $PWD/archivebox:/app/archivebox \
    archivebox server 0.0.0.0:8000 --debug --reload

# (remove the --reload flag and add the --nothreading flag when profiling with the django debug toolbar)
# When using --reload, make sure any files you create can be read by the user in the Docker container, eg with 'chmod a+rX'.

Common development tasks

See the ./bin/ folder and read the source of the bash scripts within. You can also run all these in Docker. For more examples see the GitHub Actions CI/CD tests that are run: .github/workflows/*.yaml.

Run in DEBUG mode

Click to expand... 
archivebox config --set DEBUG=True
# or
archivebox server --debug ...
# faster dev version wo/ bg workers enabled:
daphne -b 0.0.0.0 -p 8000 archivebox.core.asgi:application

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1074212/how-can-i-see-the-raw-sql-queries-django-is-running

Install and run a specific GitHub branch

Click to expand...
Use a Pre-Built Image

If you're looking for the latest dev Docker image, it's often available pre-built on Docker Hub, simply pull and use archivebox/archivebox:dev.

docker pull archivebox/archivebox:dev
docker run archivebox/archivebox:dev version
# verify the BUILD_TIME and COMMIT_HASH in the output are recent
Build Branch from Source

You can also build and run any branch yourself from source, for example to build & use dev locally:

# docker-compose.yml:
services:
    archivebox:
        image: archivebox/archivebox:dev
        build: 'https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox.git#dev'
        ...

# or with plain Docker:
docker build -t archivebox:dev https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox.git#dev
docker run -it -v $PWD:/data archivebox:dev init

# or with pip:
pip install 'git+https://github.com/pirate/ArchiveBox@dev'
npm install 'git+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox.git#dev'
archivebox install

Run the linters / tests

Click to expand... 
./bin/lint.sh
./bin/test.sh

(uses flake8, mypy, and pytest -s)

Make DB migrations, enter Django shell, other dev helper commands

Click to expand... 
# generate the database migrations after changes to models.py
cd archivebox/
./manage.py makemigrations

# enter a python shell or a SQL shell
cd path/to/test/data/
archivebox shell
archivebox manage dbshell

# generate a graph of the ORM models
brew install graphviz
pip install pydot graphviz
archivebox manage graph_models -a -o orm.png
open orm.png

# list all models with field db info and methods
archivebox manage list_model_info --all --signature --db-type --field-class

# print all django settings
archivebox manage print_settings
archivebox manage print_settings --format=yaml    # pip install pyyaml

# autogenerate an admin.py from given app models
archivebox manage admin_generator core > core/admin.py

# dump db data to a script that re-populates it
archivebox manage dumpscript core > scripts/testdata.py
archivebox manage reset core
archivebox manage runscript testdata

# resetdb and clear all data!
archivebox manage reset_db

# use django-tui to interactively explore commands
pip install django-tui
# ensure django-tui is in INSTALLED_APPS: core/settings.py
archivebox manage tui

# show python and JS package dependency trees
pdm list --tree
npm ls --all
ArchiveBox ORM models relatinoship graph

Contributing a new extractor

Click to expand...



ArchiveBox extractors are external binaries or Python/Node scripts that ArchiveBox runs to archive content on a page.

Extractors take the URL of a page to archive, write their output to the filesystem data/archive/TIMESTAMP/EXTRACTOR/..., and return an ArchiveResult entry which is saved to the database (visible on the Log page in the UI).

Check out how we added archivebox/extractors/singlefile.py as an example of the process: Issue #399 + PR #403.


The process to contribute a new extractor is like this:

Important

This process is getting much easier after v0.8.x, there is a new plugin system under development: https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/releases/tag/v0.8.4-rc

  1. Open an issue with your propsoed implementation (please link to the pages of any new external dependencies you plan on using)
  2. Ensure any dependencies needed are easily installable via a package managers like apt, brew, pip3, npm (Ideally, prefer to use external programs available via pip3 or npm, however we do support using any binary installable via package manager that exposes a CLI/Python API and writes output to stdout or the filesystem.)
  3. Create a new file in archivebox/extractors/EXTRACTOR.py (copy an existing extractor like singlefile.py as a template)
  4. Add config settings to enable/disable any new dependencies and the extractor as a whole, e.g. USE_DEPENDENCYNAME, SAVE_EXTRACTORNAME, EXTRACTORNAME_SOMEOTHEROPTION in archivebox/config.py
  5. Add a preview section to archivebox/templates/core/snapshot.html to view the output, and a column to archivebox/templates/core/index_row.html with an icon for your extractor
  6. Add an integration test for your extractor in tests/test_extractors.py
  7. Submit your PR for review! 🎉
  8. Once merged, please document it in these places and anywhere else you see info about other extractors:



Build the docs, pip package, and docker image

Click to expand...

(Normally CI takes care of this, but these scripts can be run to do it manually)

./bin/build.sh

# or individually:
./bin/build_docs.sh
./bin/build_pip.sh
./bin/build_docker.sh

Roll a release

Click to expand...

(Normally CI takes care of this, but these scripts can be run to do it manually)

./bin/release.sh

# or individually:
./bin/release_docs.sh
./bin/release_pip.sh
./bin/release_docker.sh

Further Reading


🏛️ Contact us for professional support 💬


       
ArchiveBox operates as a US 501(c)(3) nonprofit FSP (sponsored by HCB), direct donations are tax-deductible.

   

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