Moodle Downloader 2

Because manually downloading all the course files every few days is just way too easy inefficient.

Features

• Watch your Moodle account for any added or changed files in your enrolled courses.
• Optionally get notified via mail, XMPP or Telegram about these changes.
• Save yourself precious time through all these nice features.
• Do not miss any files, if files are deleted online, they are still available offline.

Setup

If you use Arch Linux, you can install the package from AUR, otherwise you can follow this procedure:

1. Install Python >=3.7
2. Install ffmpeg
3. Run pip install moodle-dl as administrator. ^{(To upgrade from an older Version use pip install -U moodle-dl instead)}
4. Run moodle-dl --init in the desired download directory.

If you run the program on Windows, please use Powershell or CMD. Please do not use a mintty like MINGW or similar.

^{Click here for an alternative setup with Docker}

Usage

• moodle-dl
  • Fetches the current state of your Moodle Account, saves it and detects any changes.
  • If configured, it also sends out a notifications.
  • It prints the changes into the console
• moodle-dl --init
  • Guides you trough the configuration of the software, including the activation of notifications and obtainment of a login-token for your Moodle-Account.
  • After the necessary configuration, further additional configurations can be made.
  • If you have to log in with Single Sign On (SSO), you can set the option --sso additionally.
• moodle-dl --config
  • Guides you through the additional configuration of the software.
  • The guide allows you to
    • select the courses that will be downloaded.
    • rename each course individually.
    • decide if subfolders should be created inside a course folder.
    • set whether submissions (files uploaded to assignments by yourself or a teacher), descriptions, links inside descriptions, databases and forum discussions should be downloaded.
    • set if external linked files should be downloaded (files like youtube videos).
    • set if files on moodle that require a cookie should be downloaded.
    • to add extra courses to your download list which you can see but you are not enrolled in, check out this wiki entry.
• moodle-dl --new-token
  • Overrides the login-token with a newly obtained one.
  • The script will ask for credentials unless they are explicitly specify with the options --username and --password
  • Use it if at any point in time, for whatever reason, the saved token gets rejected by Moodle.
• moodle-dl --change-notification-mail
  • Activate/deactivate/change the settings for receiving notifications via e-mail.
• moodle-dl --change-notification-telegram
  • Activate/deactivate/change the settings for receiving notifications via Telegram.
  • Click here for help in setting up telegram notifications
• moodle-dl --change-notification-xmpp
  • Activate/deactivate/change the settings for receiving notifications via XMPP.
• moodle-dl --manage-database
  • To manage the offline database.
  • It allows you to delete entries from the database that are no longer available locally so that they can be downloaded again.
• moodle-dl --version
  • Print program version and exit
• moodle-dl --log-responses
  • To generate a responses.log file, in which all JSON responses from Moodles are logged along with the requested URL
  • This is for development and debugging purposes only. The log file may contain private data.

Options

Options can be combined with all the actions mentioned above.

• --path PATH
  • This option can be useful if you want to save the downloaded files in a directory other than the current working directory (the directory where you run the script).
  • Sets the location of the configuration, logs and downloaded files.
  • PATH must be an existing directory in which you have read and write access.
  • Default: current working directory
• --threads INT
  • Overwrites the number of download threads. (default: 5)
• --verbose
  • Print various debugging information into the MoodleDownloader.log file.
• --username USERNAME
  • Can be used to automate the --new-token process.
  • Specify username to skip the query when creating a new token.
• --password PASSWORD
  • Can be used to automate the --new-token process.
  • Specify password to skip the query when creating a new token.
  • If the password contains special characters like spaces you can enclose it in quotation marks
• --skip-cert-verify
  • This flag is used to skip the certification verification while sending requests to Moodle and all other websites.
  • Warning: This might lead to security flaws and should only be used in non-production environments.
  • Default: False
• --ignore-ytdl-errors
  • If this option is set, errors that occur when downloading with the help of Youtube-dl are ignored. Thus, no further attempt will be made to download the file using youtube-dl.
  • By default, youtube-dl errors are critical, so the download of the corresponding file will be aborted and when you run moodle-dl again, the download will be repeated.
  • You can use this option if a download using youtube-dl fails repeatedly.
• --without-downloading-files
  • This flag is used to skip the downloading of files.
  • This allows the local database to be updated to the latest version of Moodle without having to download all files.
  • This can also be used to ignore recurring errors by adding the files that produce the errors to the database. So these files are not downloaded again.
• --sso
  • This flag is used to indicate that a Single Sign On (SSO) login to your Moodle is required.
  • Can be combined with --init and --new-token.

Notes

• Use a separate E-Mail/XMPP - Account for sending out the notifications, as its login data is saved in cleartext.
• The Login-Information for your Moodle-Account is secure, it isn't saved in any way. Only a Login-Token is saved.
• Your Moodle token is stored in the configuration file (config.json). Be careful that no unauthorized person reads this file, especially the token must not be given to an unauthorized person, this can cause a lot of trouble.
• The privatetoken can be used to create a cookie for your Moodle account. A Cookie is what is used to tell Moodle that you are logged in. The cookie.txt always keeps a valid cookie for you, take great care of this file, if it falls into the wrong hands someone can take over your entire Moodle account. This feature is only important for Moodles with plugins installed that are not supported by the Moodle app. If you do not want to generate cookies, remove the privatetoken from the config.json.

Contributing

I'm open for all forks, feedback and Pull Requests ;)

I am happy about every contribution to the project. Because my studies are slowly coming to an end, I am looking for a new Contributor/Maintainer for this project. So if someone is interested in continuing the project or adding a lot new features, please feel free to contact me by mail.

License

This project is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v3.0. For further information, please look here or here^(DE).

To mention here is, that this project is based on a project from LucaVazz. He did a very great job creating a "DualisWatcher".