Coursera Downloader

Coursera is creating some fantastic, free educational classes (e.g., algorithms, machine learning, natural language processing, SaaS). This script allows one to batch download lecture resources (e.g., videos, ppt, etc) for a Coursera class. Given a class name and related cookie file, it scrapes the course listing page to get the week and class names, and then downloads the related materials into appropriately named files and directories.

Why is this helpful? Before I was using wget, but I had the following problems:

1. Video names have a number in them, but this does not correspond to the actual order. Manually renaming them is a pain.
2. Using names from the syllabus page provides more informative names.
3. Using a wget in a forloop picks up extra videos which are not posted/linked, and these are sometimes duplicates.

DownloadThemAll can also work, but this provides better names.

Inspired in part by youtube-dl by which I've downloaded many other good videos such those from Khan Academy.

Features

• Intentionally detailed names, so that it will display and sort properly on most interfaces (e.g., MX Video on Andriod phone).
• Regex-based section (week) and lecture name filters to download only certain resources.
• File format extension filter to grab resource types you want.
• Login credentials accepted on command-line or from .netrc file
• Tested on Linux, Mac and Windows.

Directions

Requires Python 2.x (where x >= 5) and a free Coursera account enrolled in the class of interest.

1. Install any missing dependencies.

• Beautiful Soup 3
  Ubuntu/Debian: sudo apt-get install python-beautifulsoup
  Other: easy_install BeautifulSoup
• Argparse (Not necessary if Python version >= 2.7)
  Ubuntu/Debian: sudo apt-get install python-argparse
  Other: easy_install argparse
• easy_install (for the above)
  Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install python-setuptools

2. Create a Coursera.org account and enroll in a class. e.g. http://saas-class.org

3. Run the script to download the materials by providing your Coursera username, password, and the class name.

General:                 coursera-dl saas -u <user> -p <pass>
Filter by section name:  coursera-dl saas -u <user> -p <pass> -sf "Chapter_Four"
Filter by lecture name:  coursera-dl saas -u <user> -p <pass> -lf "3.1_"
Download only ppt files: coursera-dl progfun-2012-001 -u <user> -p <pass> -f "ppt"

Troubleshooting

• Make sure the classname you are using corresponds to the resource name used in the URL for that class: https://class.coursera.org/<CLASS_NAME>/class/index

• Previously one could export a Netscape-style cookies file with a browser extension (1, 2) for use with the -c option, but this approach does not appear to work with recent classes. Use the -u and -p flags instead.

• If results show 0 sections, you most likely have an invalid cookies file.

  • It's possible the cookies are already expired. This can happen very quickly. Try recreating your cookies.txt by logging in and re-copying the cookie file (step 3-5 above).
  • If you get the error: "ValueError: need more than 1 value to unpack", the process or text editor you used to copy the cookie.txt probably converted the tabs to spaces.

Contact

Post bugs and issues on github. Send other comments to John Lehmann: first last at geemail dotcom or @jplehmann