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Chirp Audiobook Download Script

Chirp AudioBook Download Script

⚠️ Not currently working. Chirp changed something that broke this script.


This script eases the process of downloading the audio files from Chirp Audiobooks. It uses the browsers console to generate a list of URLs, and then provides a list of curl or wget commands to download them.

Tested with Firefox + Terminal on MacOS, and Firefox + PowerShell on Windows 10.

As an aside, I want to give a shout out to Libro.fm for providing a simple download button for each purchase. Then you don't need a script like this!

Instructions

  1. Find the book in your Chirp Library.
    • If you've already listened to it, you may need to move it back from your Archive.
  2. Click the book to open Chirp's web player.
  3. Open the browser's Web Developer Tools.
  4. Copy-paste the script.js contents into the console and press [enter].
  5. Initiate the script:
    • If the book is already at the start, click Play (▶).
    • If the book is on any other track, open the Chapters menu (top left) and select the first Track.
  6. Wait while the script advances through each track; it's saving the URLs in the background.
    • It may say "There was an error loading your audiobook, please reload the page." under the Play button, ignore this.
    • It may also show a number of URLs in red in the console, along with a warning after each one. Ignore these also.
  7. When it reaches the final track, the script will show a list of commands on the screen in a white box.
    • Click once to highlight the complete list.
    • Copy-paste it to a command line (Terminal, Power Shell, etc.) and press [enter] to execute it.
      • Some command lines will begin executing immediately, however you still need to press [enter] to execute the final command.
  8. Once the commands finish, you should have a new folder with a cover image and each of the tracks as .m4a files.
    • On macOS, type open . and press [enter] to view the files.
    • On Windows, type explorer . and press [enter] to view the files.
  9. Check the file size of each track:
    • If any are 0 bytes, the download URL may have expired.
      • In that case, go through the process again, but in step 7, first paste the commands into a text editor and delete everything except for the ones to download the 0-byte files.

Enjoy!

const $ = document.querySelector.bind(document);
function filename(name) {
return name.replaceAll('&', 'and').replaceAll(':', ' -').replaceAll(/[^a-z0-9 ._-]+/ig, '');
}
const title = filename($('h1.book-title').textContent);
const credits = [].slice.call(document.querySelectorAll('.credit'))
.map(n => filename(n.textContent))
.join(' - ');
const dirname = `${title} - ${credits}`;
const commands = [
`mkdir "${dirname}"`,
`cd "${dirname}"`,
// note: unlike the audio files, this one doesn't need to follow redirects, so we can use the same curl command everywhere.
`curl -o "cover.jpg" "${$('.cover-image').src }"`
];
const tracks = [];
let count = 0;
function addUrl(url) {
count += 1;
const chapter = filename($('div.chapter').textContent);
tracks.push({
count,
chapter,
url
})
}
function showCommands() {
const padSize = tracks.length.toString().length;
// MacOS comes with curl but not wget. Windows powershell has fake versions of both.
// The "real" curl needs the -L (--location) flag set to know to follow redirects.
// The fake windows version turns it on by default and *refuses to work if you set the flag manually*.
// So, we generate correct curl commands for mac and correct wget commands for Windows/Linux/etc.
const isMac = navigator.userAgent.includes('Macintosh');
const cmd = isMac ? 'curl -L -o' : 'wget -O';
tracks.forEach(({count, chapter, url}) => {
let trackNum = count.toString().padStart(padSize, "0");
commands.push(`${cmd} "${title} - ${trackNum} - ${chapter}.m4a" "${url}"`);
})
const div = document.createElement('div');
div.innerHTML = '<div style="position: absolute; top: 100px; left: 100px; z-index: 100000; background: white; padding: 10px;"><p>Copy these commands to PowerShell/Terminal/etc:</p><textarea id="dl-commands" style="min-height:20em; min-width:30em"></textarea></div>';
document.body.appendChild(div);
const textarea = document.querySelector('#dl-commands');
textarea.value = commands.join('\n');
textarea.onfocus = function(){this.select()};
}
function next() {
const btn = $('button.next-chapter')
if (btn.disabled) {
showCommands()
} else {
btn.click();
}
}
const audio = $('audio');
Object.defineProperty(audio, "src", {
get() {
return '';
},
set(url) {
setTimeout(() => {
addUrl(url);
next();
}, 500);
},
});
@nfriedly
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nfriedly commented Feb 9, 2024

Apologies @CommanderJoy, in my swapping back and forth between windows and mac, I ended up testing slightly different versions of the script. The "real" curl needs a -L (or --location) flag to know to follow redirects, which is what each of those 249kb files was. But, windows doesn't have the real curl tool, it has some microsoft-developed lookalike that doesn't work quite the same. It follows redirects by default, and throws an error if you add the -L or --location flag.

So, I ended up changing the script to emit a curl command with -L for Mac users, and a wget command for everyone else.

I've now tested the updated script on both windows and mac (the same version of it on both this time!), and was able to successfully download a book on each.

@CommanderJoy
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CommanderJoy commented Feb 9, 2024 via email

@CommanderJoy
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CommanderJoy commented Feb 11, 2024 via email

@Bostwickenator
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Bostwickenator commented Feb 11, 2024 via email

@nfriedly
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nfriedly commented Feb 12, 2024

Huh, apparently Chirp is a little inconsistent about their audio formats. I just checked 15 books from my library and 14 were indeed m4a's (AAC codec), but the last one was actually .mp3 (mislabeled as .m4a by this script.) Unfortunately, I'm not sure if there is a straightforward way to handle that, as we're setting the filename before the file is downloaded, but it has to be downloaded before we could do anything to determine the file type.

A renaming script for the ones that turn out to be mp3's would be a good idea, but probably not something I'm going to have done today.

@Bostwickenator I just took a look at your combining script - that's pretty cool! (I don't want to add the cd .. to the main script, because I think leaving the user in the book directory is a bit easier for new users, but of course you're welcome to add it to your fork :)

I think what ultimately needs to happen is that someone needs to turn this into a browser extension that downloads all of the files to the user's Downloads folder, figures out the correct filename, and potentially even combines them to a single file with a wasm'd version of ffmpeg. I might do it eventually, but not today...

@Bostwickenator
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Bostwickenator commented Feb 12, 2024 via email

@nfriedly
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Yeah, the browser extension should probably normalize the metadata also...

Heads up the FFmpeg step isn't super fast, only 70-100x playback speed if I
remember correctly.

I think there's a way to tell ffmpeg to copy over the audio to the new file without re-encoding it, which should be faster. Something like https://superuser.com/a/1156327/351654

@Bostwickenator
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Bostwickenator commented Feb 12, 2024 via email

@CommanderJoy
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Just as an update, on a Mac and because I use Audiobook Builder which seems to be finicky about filenames, in the code I substituted mp3 and that works perfectly.

@Sbackus65
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In the last day or so I have gotten the following comment after each wget command: "HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 401 Unauthorized

Username/Password Authentication Failed." I have tried with Chrome and FIrefox, and with WIndows 10 PowerShell and wiith Ubuntu Konsole...

@nfriedly
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@Sbackus65 Yep, it seems broken for me too now. Chirp must have changed something.

@CommanderJoy
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Well the code is no longer working with Chirp, and I wonder if this is no longer possible. While I could insert the code into the javascript console and I could put the code into Terminal, all files are 37 kb and do not play. A sad day for sure. Is there any way to come up with a fix for whatever they did?

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