Installing, scraping a first comic, the common flags, and priming comics for another machine to finish.

Python 3.9+ and Chrome or Firefox (Selenium 4.6+ fetches the driver itself), or use the Docker container.

pip install -r requirements.txt

python mirror_base.py --output "Uncompressed/MyComic" "https://example.com/comic/first-page/"

It finds the image and the next link, walks forward until there is no next page, saves each image, and writes mirror_metadata.json in the folder plus a .cbz: under a sibling CBZs/ tree when one exists beside Uncompressed/, otherwise beside the folder (details in Library Layout). Run the same command later and it resumes from where it stopped, adding only new pages. For a whole library, see Running Unattended.

A page keeps the name the site gives it: the filename the server sends, else the last part of the image address without its query string. Only a name with no picture extension (/comic-image/1650564/?token=...) gets one, from the server's content type or the file's first bytes. Comics scraped when .png was added to every name keep those names; the page a run re-saves at its start switches to the new spelling rather than being held twice.

Use --prefix when the filename scheme changes mid-run (a date stamp becomes NAME_0421.jpg), since a prefix pins download order, which is publication order; and when a site numbers each chapter from one (/comics/1/1.png, /comics/131/1.png), where chapters would overwrite each other: a scrape stops with code 9 first. Such a site reuses a name at each chapter boundary, so the backwards check waits for a second backwards step.

A scrape from page one into an empty folder records which page is which, with real names and sizes, so the comic never needs a walk. To start a comic over, delete its folder and archive and add it again; its old index is renamed aside in config/index with .replaced-<date>.

Scraping over a network share is slow. --prime saves only the first page, follows the next link once to prove it works, writes metadata and archive, and stops:

python mirror_base.py --prime -o "D:/Comics/Uncompressed/MyComic" "https://example.com/comic/first-page/"

The metadata resumes on page two, so the next update_comics.py run on the machine holding the library fetches the rest (drop an update-now.txt to start it). No next button means the comic has one page or needs its next element added (Element Paths).