FutureLearn Video downloader

futurelearn_dl.sh

#!/bin/bash
 
#
# Usage:
#    > futurelearn_dl.sh [email protected] password course-name week-id
# Where *[email protected]* and *password* - your credentials
# ,*course-name* is the name from URL
# and *week-id* is the ID from the URL
#
# E.g. To download all videos from the page: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/corpus-linguistics/todo/238
# Execute following command:
#    > futurelearn_dl.sh [email protected] password corpus-linguistics 238
#
 
email=$1
password=$2
course=$3
weekid=$4
HD=/hd
 
# Pulls the login page and strips out the auth token
authToken=`curl -s -L -c cookies.txt 'https://www.futurelearn.com/sign-in' | \
           grep -Po "(?<=authenticity_token\" value=\")([^\"]+)"`
 
 
function dlvid {
    vzid=`curl -s -b cookies.txt $1 | grep -Po '(?<=video-)[0-9]+'`
    vzurl=https://view.vzaar.com/${vzid}/download${HD}
    curl -O -J -L $vzurl
 
}
 
# Posts all the pre-URI-encoded stuff and appends the URI-encoded auth token
curl -X POST -s -L -e 'https://www.futurelearn.com/sign-in' -c cookies.txt -b cookies.txt \
    --data-urlencode email=$email \
    --data-urlencode password=$password \
    --data-urlencode authenticity_token=$authToken 'https://www.futurelearn.com/sign-in' > /dev/null
 
# Download Course page
curl -s -L -b cookies.txt https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/${course}/todo/${weekid} | \
    grep -B8 'headline.*video' | grep -o '/courses[^"]*' | \
    while read -r line; do
        url=https://www.futurelearn.com${line}/progress
        dlvid $url
    done

Hello , I tried to use this script on Windows using Cygwin but I couldn't ..

Python version is 3.4.3
Windows 10 64bit

Updated this script a little bit, because it wasn’t working for me.

I also added aria2 support to enable me to resume downloads (and skip over completed downloads) if things got interrupted midway.

https://gist.github.com/deepakjois/e2e75d3eabae3dc71253

@thelostelite It looks like you just don't have curl installed, you need to rerun the cygwin setup.exe and select the curl package (in the 'Net' category)

OK, I couldn't put this off any longer ...

I scrapped the bash script (still not achieving login) although it is still there in old commits of the repo,
https://github.com/mjbright/futurelearn-dl

and we now have a Python3 version.

Current status is that I'm successfully obtaining mp4 and pdf downloadable urls.
By the time you read this it should be doing basic downloads ... and then I have to do something else on this Sunday ...

I hope this helps people.

I won't have much time to update this before December, but hope to evolve it.

The repo is here:
https://github.com/mjbright/futurelearn-dl

The biggest todo items once downloading is implemented are

• fixing the "occasional" unicode errors (tricky)
• add proper command-line arguments
• handle a week at a time
• don't repeat downloads

OK, I've published something useable (for me ... YMMV).

It downloads most mp4 and pdf files for a course.

It can download just one week and avoids downloading files which already exist
(doesn't download if the destination file exists ...careful if you move/rename)

Still some unhandled unicode errors and the need for proper cmd-line argument handling.

I'll stop spamming here now.
Follow the repo if you're interested.
https://github.com/mjbright/futurelearn-dl

NOTE: I won't have much time to look at issues until December, but please file issues anyway..

More than welcome to have functionality issues or just comments on bad style ...