/coursera

Script for downloading Coursera.org videos and naming them.

Primary LanguagePython

Coursera Downloader

Coursera is creating some fantastic, free educational classes (e.g., algorithms, machine learning, natural language processing, SaaS). This script allows one to batch download lecture resources (e.g., videos, ppt, etc) for a Coursera class. Given a class name and related session ID, it scrapes the course listing page to get the week and class names, and then downloads the related materials into appropriately named files and directories.

Why is this helpful? Before I was using wget, but I had the following problems:

  1. Video names have a number in them, but this does not correspond to the actual order. Manually renaming them is a pain.
  2. Using names from the syllabus page provides more informative names.
  3. Using a wget in a forloop picks up extra videos which are not posted/linked, and these are sometimes duplicates.

DownloadThemAll can also work, but this provides better names.

Inspired in part by youtube-dl by which I've downloaded many other good videos such those from Khan Academy.

Features

  • Intentionally detailed names, so that it will display and sort properly on most interfaces (e.g., MX Video on Andriod phone).
  • Regex-based section (week) and lecture name filters to download only certain resources.
  • File format extension filter to grab resource types you want.
  • Tested on both Linux and Windows.

Directions

Requires Python 2.x (where x >= 5) and a free Coursera account.

  1. Install any missing dependencies.

  • Requests

  • Beautiful Soup 3
    Ubuntu/Debian: sudo apt-get install python-beautifulsoup
    Other: easy_install BeautifulSoup

  • Argparse (Not necessary if Python version >= 2.7)
    Ubuntu/Debian: sudo apt-get install python-argparse
    Other: easy_install argparse

  • easy_install (for the above)
    Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install python-setuptools

  1. Create a Coursera.org account. e.g. http://saas-class.org

  2. Login with your web browser.

  3. Retrive the session ID by pasting the following line to address bar of the browser:

    javascript:$(document.cookie.split(';')).each(function() {if(/session=/.test(this)) document.write(this.substring(9))})

  4. Run the script to download the materials.
    General: coursera-dl saas -s <sessionid>
    Filter by section name: coursera-dl saas -s <sessionid> -sf "Chapter_Four"
    Filter by lecture name: coursera-dl saas -s <sessionid> -lf "3.1_"
    Download only ppt files: coursera-dl saas -s <sessionid> -f "ppt"

Troubleshooting

  • If it's finding 0 sections, you most likely have an invalid session ID.

    • It's possible the session has already expired. This can happen very quickly. Try re-retrieving your session ID by logging in and re-copying the session ID (step 3-5 above).

  • If you've tried re-retrieving your session ID and still have problems, please post to issues.

Contact

Post bugs and enhancement requests to issues. Send any other questions or comments to:
John Lehmann: first last at geemail dotcom or @jplehmann