kindle-pdf-scraper

Node.js/Puppeteer scraper able to download given book from Kindle Cloud Reader as PDF.

Scraper performs following actions in Kindle Cloud Reader:

• log into the app
• set page layout in the app
• press next-page button for each page and download each page as PDF with page.pdf interface

This process was implemented in 02/2021. It is possible that this implementation will need to be adjusted in the future.

Due to lack of Node.js PDF libraries the merging was implemented with Python 3/PyPDF2.

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Prerequisities

• Node.js, npm cli
• Puppeteer ^7.0.1 with built-in Chromium
• argparse ^2.0.1
• Python 3, PyPDF2 package (for PDF merging)

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Usage

npm install

node scrape.js -url "https://read.amazon.com/?asin=XXXXXXXXXX" -email "xxx@yy.zz" -pwd "d7nkb1!3423j" -pages 200 -path "./my-book/" -fs 0 -pm 1 -pc "white"

optional arguments:  
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -url URL              URL of given book in Kindle Cloud Reader (required)
  -email EMAIL          Amazon login email (required)
  -pwd PASSWORD         Amazon login password (required)
  -pages NO. PAGES      Number of pages (from beginning) to scrape (required)
  -path SAVE PATH       Absolute/relative path to save PDF files (required)
  -fs [FONTSIZE], --fontSize [FONTSIZE]
                        Font size of text 0/1/2/3/4 (default 2)
  -pm [PAGEMARGIN], --pageMargin [PAGEMARGIN]
                        PDF page margins 0/1/2/3/4 (default 1)
  -pc [PAGECOLOR], --pageColor [PAGECOLOR]
                        PDF page color white/sepia/black (default white)

python merge.py -path ./my-book/ -fr 1 -to 200 -name final.pdf -l 200

usage: merge.py [-h] -path PATH -fr FR -to TO -name NAME [-l [LEFT]] [-r [RIGHT]] [-t [TOP]] [-b [BOTTOM]]

Merge given scraped PDF pages into single PDF book

optional arguments:
 -h, --help            show this help message and exit
 -path PATH            Path to scraped PDF pages with name pattern \d+/pdf (REQUIRED)
 -fr FR                Number of first PDF page to merge (REQUIRED)
 -to TO                Number of last PDF page to merge (REQUIRED)
 -name NAME            Name of final PDF file (REQUIRED)
 -l [LEFT], --left [LEFT]
                       Crop left margin of all pages (px) (default 0)
 -r [RIGHT], --right [RIGHT]
                       Crop right margin of all pages (px) (default 0)
 -t [TOP], --top [TOP]
                       Crop top margin of all pages (px) (default 0)
 -b [BOTTOM], --bottom [BOTTOM]
                       Crop bottom margin of all pages (px) (default 0)

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Recommendations

Kindle Cloud Reader makes it difficult to render text on PDF pages. For that reason it is recommended to set up PDF layout first. Start with changing these parameters:

• font size (-fs) and page margin (-pm) arguments
• browser viewport : change defaultViewport values of chromeOptions object in the constructor

If PDF layout is still not sufficient enough, continue with changing printOptions object in the constructor.

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Known issues

• browser sometimes looses track of iframe with page content (this.sel.iframe selector). It was not possible to reproduce the error