[support] is there a way to backup a product page from aliexpress ?

[schmurtzm]

Hi , Thanks for this really great tool !

Is there a way to backup correctly an item page from aliexpress ? Something like this : https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32673301320.html

Capture result looks like this :

Best regards.

[snshn]

Hi there Schmurtz,

it looks like aliexpress has a lot of runtime-injected JS assets; in order to "catch" those the software would have to act as a headless browser and execute JS code, monolith doesn't do that, it's more closely related to curl/wget rather than phantomjs. I'd try to use SingleFile as it tends to deal with JS-heavy resources better than monolith.

Eventually I'm planning to make a tool to be used in combination with monolith for WASM and JS via stdin, e.g. monolith-js-headless-browser <url> | monolith -o result.htm.

[schmurtzm]

Hi @snshn , thank you for this interesting anwser. I tried with SingleFile and yes it works like it should but I'm looking for a command line tool.

(Short story : I buy many electronic components for my hobby so I'm making an excel spreadsheet to backup all my aliexpress orders and I would like a local backup of each webpage item to be able to consult it even many years later.)

Single file allow an headless mode but with a docker, the way to do is a lot more complex than a simple executable for Windows 😓 Docker is probably doable for me but it doesn't allow to share my "aliexpress order backup" project with the community.

So if you make this kind of tool it could be very interesting ! I think there is no equivalent...

[yantar92]

Hi @snshn , thank you for this interesting anwser. I tried with SingleFile and yes it works like it should but I'm looking for a command line tool.

You can also try https://github.com/pirate/ArchiveBox/

[schmurtzm]

You can also try https://github.com/pirate/ArchiveBox/

Thanks. Seems to be a great tool too but still require a docker so still hard to share in a zip file 😅

[snshn]

SingleFile is actually a CLI tool as well, it's just more commonly known as a browser extension. Here's more info.

[snshn]

This thing could also work, e.g. puppeteer print https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32673301320.html aliexpress-32673301320.pdf – not a HTML file but still useful for archiving things.

[schmurtzm]

This thing could also work, e.g. puppeteer print https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32673301320.html aliexpress-32673301320.pdf – not a HTML file but still useful for archiving things.

I tried puppeteer but the result is similar to monolith with the JS assets from aliexpress.

SingleFile is actually a CLI tool as well, it's just more commonly known as a browser extension. Here's more info.

I had some problem to install SingleFile CLI with npm (it doesn't install chromium automatically for an unknown reason). Once solved it works great. I will try to make a portable version of this tool later (I don't know if it is possible to include nodejs in a portable tool...).

I also made a version with firefox portable and the web extension of SingleFile which has an option to autobackup and autoclose tabs.

Thank you for your advice, I've discovered useful tools thanks to you. And looking forward your own tool based on monolith ;)

[snshn]

You're welcome, glad we were able to help!

[snshn]

The best that I can recommend as of right now is to do this: monolith -b https://www.aliexpress.com/item/ https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32673301320.html -o result.html. It won't work without internet connection or with JS disabled in the browser, but at least the page renders fully once those remote fonts and other assets get retrieved via JS.

[snshn]

Hey @schmurtzm,

this seems to be working:

chromium --headless --disable-gpu --dump-dom https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32673301320.html | monolith - -b https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32673301320.html -o aliexpress.html