O'Reilly Book Downloader

A powerful bash script to download books from the O'Reilly Learning Platform in PDF and/or EPUB format.

Features

• Download books in PDF and/or EPUB format
• Support for both username/password and SSO login methods
• Batch downloading capability for multiple books
• EPUB to PDF conversion using:
  • Local Calibre installation on macOS (if available)
  • Docker-based conversion as fallback
• Progress indicators and detailed output

Prerequisites

• Docker: Required for downloading books from O'Reilly
• Bash shell: To run the script
• O'Reilly subscription: Either personal account or organizational SSO access
• Calibre (optional): For local PDF conversion on macOS

Installation

1. Clone or download this repository

2. Make the script executable:

   chmod +x oreilly-downloader.sh

3. Set up authentication (see below)

Authentication Setup

Method 1: Username/Password Authentication

1. Create data directory:

   mkdir -p data

2. Create a configuration file with your O'Reilly credentials:

   cp user.conf.sample data/user.conf

3. Edit data/user.conf with your actual username and password:

   your_oreilly_username@example.com
   your_password_here
   

Method 2: SSO Authentication

1. Log in to O'Reilly using your organization's SSO

2. Navigate to https://learning.oreilly.com/profile/ (or any authenticated page, really)

3. Extract cookies from your browser:

   • Open Developer Tools (F12)
   • Run this code snippet from Console to copy your cookies as JSON:

    copy(JSON.stringify(document.cookie.split(';').map(c => c.split('=')).map(i => [i[0].trim(), i[1].trim()]).reduce((r, i) => {r[i[0]] = i[1]; return r;}, {})))

4. Save the cookies JSON to a file (e.g., cookies.json)

Usage

Download a single book

./oreilly-downloader.sh -b <book_id> -t <output_title> -f <format> [-m <login_method>] [-c <cookie_file>]

Options:

• -b <book_id>: Book ID or URL (required for single book download)
• -t <output_title>: Output filename without extension (required for single book download)
• -f <format>: Format to download: pdf, epub, or both (required)
• -m <login_method>: Authentication method: user (default) or sso
• -c <cookie_file>: JSON file with cookies (required for SSO login)
• -h: Display help message

Download multiple books

./oreilly-downloader.sh -l <batch_file> -f <format> [-m <login_method>] [-c <cookie_file>]

Options:

• -l <batch_file>: Path to file containing list of books to download
• Other options same as Basic Usage

Batch File Format

Create a text file with one book per line in the format:

<book_id>,<output_title>

Example (books.txt):

9780321635754,Art of Computer Programming
9781492092506,Data Pipelines Pocket Reference
# Lines starting with # are comments
9781492087144,Building ML Pipelines

Examples

Username/Password Login

# Download a book in PDF format
./oreilly-downloader.sh -b 9780321635754 -t "Art_of_Computer_Programming" -f pdf

# Download a book in both PDF and EPUB formats
./oreilly-downloader.sh -b 9780321635754 -t "Art_of_Computer_Programming" -f both

SSO Login

# Download a book in PDF format with SSO
./oreilly-downloader.sh -b 9780321635754 -t "Art_of_Computer_Programming" -f pdf -m sso -c cookies.json

# Download multiple books with SSO
./oreilly-downloader.sh -l books.txt -f pdf -m sso -c cookies.json

Finding Book IDs

1. Browse to the book on O'Reilly Learning Platform
2. The book ID is in the URL: https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/book-title/<BOOK_ID>/
3. For example: https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/art-of-computer/9780321635754/ → Book ID is 9780321635754

Notes

• For PDF conversion, the script uses:
  • Local Calibre on macOS if available (/Applications/calibre.app/Contents/MacOS/ebook-convert)
  • Docker-based conversion using rappdw/ebook-convert as fallback (untested)
• Temporary files are stored in the download/tmp directory
• Final downloaded files are saved to:
  • PDFs: download/pdf/
  • EPUBs: download/epub/

Acknowledgements

• kirinnee/oreilly-downloader for the Docker image used for downloading
• Calibre Project for the ebook conversion tools
• rappdw/ebook-convert for the Docker image used for conversion