Automate download of PDF/PNG files

Mathematica notebook for use in automating download of PDF/PNG files.

Concatenating URLs in Excel or Sheets

If you are going to be grabbing more than just a few URLs to upload to the Internet Archive using the Google Sheets tool then these hacks might be useful to you!

• When you find an item that has multiple PDF links, for example, a journal, you can take a look at the filename to see if there is a consistent pattern that will allow you to easily generate all of the URLs in a spreadsheet without having to copy and paste them individually.
• Take a look at this journal, for example: http://nbuv.gov.ua/j-tit/UZTNU_istor
  • Select one of the years (2013) and then an issue (2013 Т. 26(65); 1)
  • Hover over the first item in the table of contents (Титул) and you will see a filename: http://nbuv.gov.ua/j-pdf/UZTNU_istor_2013_26(65)_1_1.pdf
  • You’ll notice that the first part of the URL is going to be consistently used by each item following the first item
  • When you get to the third article in the table of contents you will see a slightly different filename: http://nbuv.gov.ua/UJRN/UZTNU_istor_2013_26(65)_1_3
  • Let’s compare:
    • http://nbuv.gov.ua/j-pdf/UZTNU_istor_2013_26(65)_1_1.pdf
    • http://nbuv.gov.ua/UJRN/UZTNU_istor_2013_26(65)_1_3
  • The /j-pdf/ is not present in the filenames for articles #3 down and they do not include the .pdf extension.
  • So if you have 20 articles within a journal, such as in the Вчені записки Таврійського національного університету імені В. І. Вернадського. you can break up the filepath in a spreadsheet and use the concatenate formula to automatically populate the sheet with the URLs rather than manually copying and pasting.
  • If we use the journal example above - you can break up the filename like this across columns (from left to right)
    • Prefix: http://nbuv.gov.ua/j-pdf/UJRN/UZTNU_istor_
    • Year_Vol_Iss: 201326(65)_1
    • Article_Number: 1.pdf
    • Full Link: http://nbuv.gov.ua/j-pdf/UJRN/UZTNU_istor_2013_26(65)_1_1.pdf
  • The concatenate formula would be entered into the “full link” column and the general formula is: =CONCATENATE(A2,”“,B2,”“,C2)
    • The letter and number combo refers to the column and row number
• As you enter the information for each of the columnn (Prefix, Year_Vol_Iss, Article_Number) you will then fill down each column automatically.
• Here is a template that you can use for your needs.