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Internet Archive

Mode: 🌐 Public · Domain: archive.org

Commands

Command Description
opencli archive search <query> Search Internet Archive items across books, movies, audio, software, and web
opencli archive item <identifier> Fetch metadata for a single Internet Archive item by identifier
opencli archive wayback <url> Look up the closest Wayback Machine snapshot for a URL
opencli archive snapshots <url> List Wayback Machine snapshots over time for a URL via the CDX API

Usage Examples

# Full-text search across all mediatypes (default sort by downloads)
opencli archive search "machine learning" --limit 10

# Restrict to a mediatype
opencli archive search "newton principia" --mediatype texts --limit 5
opencli archive search "moon landing" --mediatype movies --sort date --limit 5

# Single item metadata
opencli archive item open-syllabus
opencli archive item FinalFantasy2_356

# Closest Wayback snapshot, optionally near a date
opencli archive wayback wikipedia.org
opencli archive wayback wikipedia.org --timestamp 2015

# Wayback CDX history for a URL
opencli archive snapshots wikipedia.org --limit 20
opencli archive snapshots wikipedia.org --from 2010 --to 2015 --limit 50

# JSON output
opencli archive search "machine learning" -f json

search Options

Option Description
query (positional) Full-text query (matches title, description, creator, subject)
--mediatype texts / movies / audio / software / image / web / data / collection
--sort downloads (default) / date / addeddate / week / title
--limit Max items (1-100, default: 20)

Returns rows with rank, identifier, title, creator, date, mediatype, downloads, url. The identifier round-trips into opencli archive item <identifier>.

item Options

Option Description
identifier (positional) Archive item identifier (letters, digits, ".", "_", "-")

Returns one row with identifier, title, creator, date, mediatype, collection, description, file_count, url.

wayback Options

Option Description
url (positional) URL to look up (with or without scheme)
--timestamp Target timestamp (YYYY[MM[DD[hh[mm[ss]]]]] or ISO date). Defaults to most recent snapshot

Returns one row with original_url, requested_timestamp, snapshot_timestamp, snapshot_url, status. The snapshot_url round-trips into a regular browser fetch.

snapshots Options

Option Description
url (positional) URL to look up (with or without scheme)
--from Earliest digit-only timestamp
--to Latest digit-only timestamp
--limit Max snapshots (1-1000, default: 20)

Returns rows with timestamp, snapshot_url, status, mimetype, original_url. Each snapshot_url is a direct Wayback Machine permalink. The CDX endpoint is served over HTTP only; the HTTPS endpoint returns 503 in practice.

Prerequisites

  • No browser required; uses public archive.org APIs (Advanced Search, Metadata, Wayback Available, CDX).