djlight / pdfgrabber

Download PDF books from bSmart, Pearson, Booktab/Kitaboo, Scuolabook, Oxford, and many more!

What is this?

This vendor-agnostic script is used to download pdfs (and covers) from different services.

State of features

Every downloader has different features that might also be implemented in the future. As of now, there is a way to download best-quality pdf from every one of them, with varying degree of quality, speed and discretion. Here's a table riassuming all the features.

service	pdf download	table of contents	pdf size	max logins	page labels	login expire	cover	rendered
Scuolabook	perfect	yes (very small)	excellent	very restrictive	yes	never	yes	no
MyLim	perfect	excellent	excellent	no	not yet/depends on vendor	?	yes	no
Pearson eText	perfect	(depends on vendor)/excellent	big	no	no/depends on vendor	very fast (30 min)	yes	sometimes
Pearson Reader+	yes	good/very good	big	no	yes	very fast (30 min)	yes	no
bSmart	yes	yes (very small)	very big (100+ mb)	no	yes	?	yes	no
Mondadori HUB Scuola	yes	yes	very big (100+ mb)	no	yes (disable because glitches)	?	yes	no
MEE2	yes	yes (very small)	good/excellent	no/1token4ever	no	never	yes (?)	no
easyeschool	yes	yes (very small)	excellent	no/1token4ever	no	never	yes	no
Zanichelli Booktab	yes	yes	good/average	yes	yes	?	yes	no
Zanichelli Kitaboo	yes	yes	average/big	yes	yes	?	yes	yes
Oxford Learner’s Bookshelf	yes	yes (small)	very big	?	not yet/no	?	yes	no
Laterza diBooK	yes	yes/(depends on vendor)	excellent	?	not yet/no	?	yes	no
Raffaello Player	yes	yes (incomplete bc no samples :-(	very big	?	yes	?	yes	no

Apps that I am aware of but I can't work with beacuse I don't have books:

• Raffaello player Done
• Appbook (might be a shitty html webview like booktab)

TODO

• Add anonymous user
• Add ability to pass options to scripts
• Add page labels and "perfect" token checks
• General code quality improvement (better management of exceptions)
• Use pathlib for better windows compatibility

Installation

You need python 3.10+. To install all the requirements run python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt. Also the script has been tested only on mac os, open an issue/pull request if you have tried it on linux/windows or you have problems.

Quirks

Kitaboo/Reader+ books

For kitaboo and RPLUS_EPUB books the script uses playwright (chromium automation) to render the html pages. You might want to issue playwright install chromium to download chroium. No forther setup is needed.

Scuolabook

Scuolabook has a very strict login system, where you can have only 2 devices logged in and you only have 2 deletions per year. This means that you can only log in 4 times every year, with no way of downloading books (at least, the pdf version) if you have hit this limit. pdfgrabber should save the token for you, but you should also keep it somewhere safer such as a text document.

Pearson

Pearon has a terrible double-service combo, eText and Reader+. Their login system is a gigantic mess, so the tokens expire very quickly (the ability to refresh them still needs to be implemented). This isn't too big of a problem in practice, since the you have unlimited logins. If your login fails even though you are sure your username and password are right, then it means that you need to accept the terms & privacy policy for one of the two services. Just download the Reader+ app and log in once. It will ask to accept the terms & conditions. If the download of an eText book gets stuck in loop where it infinitely tries to download, then that is a problem with too strict caching policies from pearson's servers. It is problematic even for the official app, where it just spits out an error. Just try again later ;-) Both RPLUS_PDF and RPLUS_EPUB books are stored in a password protected zip file. Python's ZipFile module doesn't do the decryption natively, so it might take a (very) long time for some big books in the "Extracting zip" phase. If you have found a decent workaround let me know.

How to use it

Just run python3 main.py. You first need to create an account by selecting r in the first menu. After you created an account, select d and the menus will guide you. The output file will be files/<service>/<id>.pdf

Disclaimer

This script is provided "as is", without any type of warranty. I am not responsible of any harm or nuclear war that this may cause.