CONTENT DOWNLOADER FOR RDNA
Tutorial
1. Open to the Settings tab and select the root folder (Select Root Folder button),
which is where all downloads will go. There are different folder options you can
choose between depending on how you want things to be structured (see
screenshot below). When you have chosen one, you must stick to that setting and
not make any changes to the folder or file structure, otherwise the program will not
function correctly (the folder/file structure serves as the file ”database”).
You can create several Root Folders with different content, but then you must keep
track of what goes where yourself, if you want to avoid duplicate downloads.
Remember to click Reload Current Page or Load Downloads Page after you shift
to another Root Folder, to update data.
2. Log in with the browser in the right pane (if you're not already logged in - the
browser is an IE clone and shares login cookies and other stuff with IE, so if you use
IE for browsing RDNA you may already be logged in).
The first page in your downloads section should now show up in the browser. All
data from the RDNA download page will automatically load into the list in the left
pane; if you change page or search for specific items it will automatically update to
reflect the content on the page. Click the Reset button on the RDNA search page to
get back to the download pages.
6. Click the Download button to download the selected files. The download section
has its own login, if you're not already logged in a login box will pop up, enter your
login data here, save them if you want, and then log in. Download will start as soon
as you're logged in. You can use the browser for browsing the store while download
is running if you like; to get back to the download page just click the Load
Downloads Page button below the browser.
After download of a file the Status column will show the status of the file.
”+ P(number)” means that Promo Pictures for the product also has been
downloaded; the number shows how many. Product pages for some products are no
longer available, in this case there’s no Promo Picture or product data to download
(no “+ P” in Status column).
”Max DL Exceeded” means that you have used up your downloads for the file, in that
case you must ask RDNA to reset downloads for your account.
”File Corrupted” means that the length of the downloaded file is different from the
length reported by the server, which means something has gone wrong during
download. The corrupted file is automatically being deleted. Just try to download the
file again, that should normally solve the problem.
”Not Accessible” means that the file is not accessible which usually means an error
on the server. Try again, if the problem persists, ask RDNA support to look into the
problem.
3. Select which file types you want to download (Product Files and/or Product
Data (product page pictures and info) with the corresponding checkboxes. The
recommended procedure is to check the boxes for both file and promo picture, as in
the screenshot below. In this case it will attempt to download first the product file and
then the product data.
NOTE: at this time all product pages seem to have been disabled at RDNA so it may
be a waste of time to try to download product data, as it will slow down download in
general.
The Make Download Settings Stick checkbox will prevent the Download Product
Files and Download Product Data checkboxes from being cleared when a new
page is loaded, if you want to use the same settings for multiple pages.
Use this option for example if you want to try if previously missing promo pictures
have become available again, or to add additional promo pictures and product page
data (version 0.534 and later only).
However, when Download Product Data is checked, it will only download the data
for files with status ”Not Saved”, not for files with status ”Saved OK” or ”File Exists” if
these are checked, as it assumes you have already tried to download the promo
picture for these.
If you want the program to attempt to download the product data for all files checked
for download no matter their status, you must use the Retry option. Check the
Download Product Data box twice so you see a square instead of a checkmark, as
in the screenshot below.
5. Check those items you want to download using the checkboxes on the left side.
You can check/uncheck all at once by using the Context Menu (right-click on file
list) or do multiple select using ctrl+shift etc., or select a number of files to check
using shift-click.
Checking files for corruption
It’s recommended to check your product files for corruption after download. Even
though the program checks the file length after download a file may still occasionally
be corrupted because of a flaky connection or whatever even if the length is OK and
status therefore is ”Saved OK”.
WinRAR (and possible some other archivers as well) can batch test zip files for
corruption. To use the instructions below WinRAR must be configured to show the
”Test archive” option in its context (right-click) menu.
1. in your file explorer search the Root Folder for zip files (*.zip)
2. select all the files found and right click on them with Ctrl pressed
3. select ”Test archive” from the Context Menu. If there are many files it may take a
little while before WinRAR responds, so be patient.
Create Product List
To create a sorted list of all your products:
1. click the Clear List button, this will delete any previously created lists and load
the first download page.
2. click the Add Page button to add the first page. Click OK on the confirmation box,
this will load the next page. Repeat step 2 until all pages have been added (it
doesn’t matter if you should happen to add the same page more than once,
duplicates will be removed automatically). If you have any products on your Gift
Pages, remember to add these to the list also.
You can also create the product list while downloading:
a. go to download page 1.
b. check Auto under Create Product List.
c. download the files you want from page 1, after download a box will
pop up, just click OK to go to next page and continue. If there are
no files you want to download on a page, just click Add Page to go
to next page.
3 click the Create List button to create the list. A message box will pop up giving
you the option for opening the list in the browser in the program. There are several
versions of the list in the folder where the program is located, all starting with
“RDNA_product_list”.
Create Product List update 1
Most people didn't get all the product pages, if any, when downloading their files, as
RDNA removed them progressively during the transfer of products to DAZ. It
appears though that Wayback Machine ( http://archive.org/web/ ) has stored if not
all then a lot of those missing pages (thanks to Haslor for pointing that out). So a
new app - Wayback Scraper for RDNA - that can download the product page data
and promo pictures has been developed. See download page
You'll need the original RDNA product page URLs however to use this app, so the
Create Product List feature (see tutorial above) has been updated in version 0.537
so it now also includes these links when you create a product list.
Create Product List update 2
NOTE: only relevant for people with products on Gift Pages.
In version 0.539 and earlier there is a bug that causes the URL links for gift products
to be mixed up when creating a product list that includes gifts. To fix this, proceed as
follows:
1. update the downloader to version 0.540 which fixes this issue.
2. open the file “allfiles_product_page_urls.txt” (located in program folder) in a text
editor and remove the pages with Gift product data, including the top line with the
page number. Usually these pages will be at the end of the file, but otherwise you
can find them by searching the file using a random product name from each page in
the RDNA Gifts section. Then save the edited file overwriting the original one (make
a backup of the original file first just in case).
3. run the downloader, go to the Gifts section and add the gift pages to the list (see
instructions under Create Product List above, except do not clear the list first).
Comments or questions can be posted in the DAZ or RDNA threads:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/72638/content-downloader-for-rdna/p1
http://forum.runtimedna.com/showthread.php?104488-Content-Downloader-for-RDNA
4. Some product names contain double quotes, (e.g. Victorian Carnival ”Play
Ground”); since these are illegal in folder names and the product folder names are
based on the product names the double quotes must either be removed or replaced
by legal characters, like single quotes. You can choose which option you want under
Double Quotes in Product Names. This setting is sticky, and once you have
chosen a setting it must not be changed again otherwise parts of the program will
not function correctly.
Downloading copies of RDNA receipts
1. Go to the Orders section in our account
2. Under Date Period select All (default setting)
3. Click Search
4. Click Check All on top of the orders list on the Orders page
5. Click the Invoices for Selected button at the bottom of the list; all the invoices will
now be displayed on a new page
6. Print the page as PDF or whatever you want *
7. Go to next Orders page and repeat from 4.
* Windows 10 includes a PDF printer, for other Windows versions there are free PDF
printers out there, e.g.:
http://www.bullzip.com/products/pdf/info.php
Get Extra Product Page Pictures (new feature in version 0.537)
NOTE: this is only relevant if you already have downloaded product page data for
your files (this has not been possible for a while).
So far, when downloading copies of product pages, only the "standard" content
(product data, promo pics) has been saved. Some pages however also contain
extra pictures and links to PDF manuals and other stuff.
Currently these pictures display normally and the manuals are accessible for
download since they're located on the RDNA server and accessed via external links,
but this will only last until the RDNA server shuts down at the end of January 2017.
So a feature has been added that will download all that stuff and convert the
external links to local links so it will still be viewable/accessible after the RDNA
shutdown. It will also attempt to fix any broken links to youtube videos. An example
of a page that has extra pictures and other stuff, before and after conversion, can
be seen here:
Before and after conversion
NOTE: if you have used the Add Date Folder and/or Add Order# Folder options
under Settings, the feature built into the downloader will not work. In this case you
should use the Product Data Converter instead which can be downloaded on the
same page as the downloader.
IMPORTANT: The program uses the previously downloaded data to get the extra
data, so the existing files and folders must not have been modified or restructured in
any way, otherwise it may not work as intended and produce error messages.
As always, it’s recommended that you back up all product data before starting the
process in case something should go wrong.
Proceed like this:
1. Select Get Extra Product Page Pictures from the Tools menu.
2. With the Test Only checkbox checked click Start to get a list of the extra pictures
and files that can be downloaded.
3. If everything looks OK, uncheck the Test Only box and click Start again.
Download of files should now begin. When finished, you’ll see the file list again, this
time with any files that couldn’t be downloaded being marked red and the reason
why they failed in the Status column. An HTML copy of the list named
“get_extra_pictures_status.htm” will be saved in the program folder in case you
want to check the updated pages.
Appendix
Product page info is stored in both XML and CSV files for easy export to other
programs. If no product page is available, there will be a limited amount of product
data in the XML/CSV files. Default CSV delimiter is comma (to split, us string ”,”
(double quote / comma / double qoute) and not just char comma, for safety). You
can choose another delimiter if you like by entering it into the CSV Delimiter field.
NEW: an app that makes it easy to look up and download RDNA
product pages on Wayback Machine. More info on download page.