This is a utility to regularly download all issues of the c't magazine in PDF format.
It uses Selenium to start a Chrome-Browser instance, navigates to https://www.heise.de/select/ct/archiv and then selects all issues shown, verifies that each is already present in the target folder and - if missing - downloads it.
Thus, running this more frequent than the four issues listed of that page are dropping off to the right (i.e. at least every 8 weeks) this will make sure that you have all issues of c't downloaded to your destination folder in PDF format for your reading pleasure.
Copyright © 2024-2025 by Michael Moser / 17732576+mmoser18@users.noreply.github.com
The basic command-line is
java -jar <jar-file> -u <userId> -p <password> <further options here...>
See the downloadCT.cmd-file for an example how to run this via a Windows command-file
(Note: you will have to enter your user-id and password into that file to get going...).
usage: Download_CT
-u,--username <arg> user-id for login to Heise Media [required]
-p,--password <arg> password for login to Heise Media [required]
-d,--download-folder <arg> download-folder [optional - default: %HOME%\downloads-folder will be used]
-t,--target-folder <arg> target-folder [optional - default: leave file in the download-folder (above)]
Just run the "typical" Maven install, i.e. mvn clean install to build the application. The generated run-able .jar can then be found in the project's target subdirectory as <application>-<version>.jar
A remark re. the build process:
For some reason the generation of an all-in-one .jar (i.e. a .jar-file that includes all application dependencies - which I generate to make it simpler to start and execute the jar instead of having to deal with dozens of additional .jars and their relative paths) first generates a tiny .jar which contains only the application's own class files. The presence of this .jar causes the generation of the all-in-one .jar later in the build to fail. So I added build steps to generate the second .jar under a different name, then to move the first .jar out of the way (by renaming it as <jar-name>.jar.original) and then renaming the all-in-one-jar as <application>-<version>.jar. If someone knows why the generation of that first .jar happens and has an idea or trick how to skip its generation in the first place, please let me know!