Slideshare Scraper

This Node.js CLI tool scrapes images from a Slideshare presentation and assembles them into a single PDF file for offline viewing. For usage instructions, run:

$ slideshare -h

Example

To create a PDF from a Dental Materials presentation, run the following command:

$ slideshare -p 47 -u https://image.slidesharecdn.com/physicalpropertiesofdentalmaterials-180214150135/95/physical-properties-of-dental-materials-[[[PAGE_NUM]]]-638.jpg?cb=1544018344

This tells the program there are 47 total pages. The [[[PAGE_NUM]]] placeholder tells the script which part of the URL represents the different pages.

Usage

If you want to start at a page other than 1, use the -s argument, and if you want less pages, adjust the -p argument to a lower value.

The -v argument increases verbosity to show commands used to download pages and convert the images to PDF.

To specify a different output folder, use -o followed by the path to the folder. If the folder doesn't exist, it gets created automatically.

Dependencies

The script assumes you have ImageMagick installed, as well as Node.js. ImageMagick's convert command is used to create the PDF. Instructions for installing ImageMagick can be found on their website.

curl is also required in order to download pages. If curl is not installed but wget is, pass in the --use-wget flag.

Debugging

You can use the Node.js debugger and the launch.json config to step through the program at various places, if something isn't working.

License

Copywright (c) James Mortensen, 2021-2022 MIT License