This post might in the wrong section, if so, can a mod move it to the appropriate section, thanks.


If you are like me and like to read eBooks once in your bed, you will miss your favorite fanfic.

So this is why i made this simple script which allow me to get my favorite fanfic from fanfiction.net in ePub format, I created this for myself at first be then, why not share ?

Its quite simple, you only have to enter the url from Fanfiction.net and there you go!

Here goes the link: http://www.p0ody-files.com/ffnet_to_epub/


(I know this is far from perfect, and may still have some error popping up so if you have errors please post here with the problem and the link to the story. Thanks)

 

Great site, until now I always used Calibre with an FanFiction Download plugin, This seems so Much easier

I will totally try this in the future.

 

I like to read on my phone when I'm out and about. I'd find a fic I like, paste the URL into the FlagFic site, and then download an epub of the fic I wanted to continue reading it on my phone without needing to be in transmission range of a phone tower. I can't do it anymore since ff.net cut off FlagFic.

Unfortunately, I can't get your site to work on my Android phone.

I tried:

https://m.fanfiction.net/s/9659792/1/The-Boy-in-the-Team
And got a PHP error. It couldn't identify the author or story ID.

I thought the problem might be the "m." so I changed it to "www."
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9659792/1/The-Boy-in-the-Team
And I got the message "Getting chapter #15..." and no further progress. My phone didn't attempt to download a file. And note that there are 70 chapters to that fic, not 15.

I thought that the fic size might be too much [near 300k words], so I dropped it down to a one-chapter fic with 1k words.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9598347/1/Agony
And received a "Getting chapter #30..." message and nothing else happened.

If you could get this working for mobile devices, I'd be very happy. m.fanfiction.net is the mobile address.

I'm on a Sony Ericsson Xperia Play R800a
OS: Android v2.3.4 [Gingerbread]
Browser: Opera Mini Next v7.5.32195

edit: I tried it on my PC and I can see why it isn't working on Opera Mini, you have the screen update with a link to the epub. Opera Mini can't see the link because it's a minimalist browser that cuts out most dynamic content and only shows static pages. If you could have the page automatically attempt to send the file to the user instead of a link [or provide a checkbox to do so] then that may solve the problem.

 

from https://www.flagfic.com/

EDIT: Sorry.

 

I'm aware of that, which is why I'm interested in p0ody's solution. It's also why I said

 

yak, i will look into making this work on mobiles.

Thanks for the report.

---------- Post automerged at 02:19 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:23 AM ----------

yak, could you try with the option 'Mobile' checked.

Also now it should accept both www.fanfiction.net link and m.fanfiction.net.

Edit @ 3h07PM: Also fixed error with One-shot.

 

Some work and some don't.

• Both of these worked. Epubs displayed on phone. They're both short, one chapter stories.
  https://m.fanfiction.net/s/9598347/1/Agony
  https://m.fanfiction.net/s/5025553/1/Dollhouses
  
• Error: PHP error: Couldn't get title and/or author. All of these are multi-chapter stories. They had the same failure and error message.
  https://m.fanfiction.net/s/9860311/1/A-Long-Journey-Home
  https://m.fanfiction.net/s/9226905/1/The-Drawing-Board
  
  
• No file was sent to the phone for this one. It's a 300k words, 69 chapter fic. It got stuck at the point where I took the screenshot.
  https://m.fanfiction.net/s/7347955/53/
  
  
• This medium length multi-chapter fic WORKED. I don't know why, when others have failed.
  https://m.fanfiction.net/s/9658968/7/Enslaved

Do you want me to test more fics?

 

You are using AJAX in your javascript, Opera Mini will not contact the server after a page has finished loading. In yak's case, the smaller stories had finished downloading by the time the page had finished loading, while the bigger stories were still in progress when the page finished loading.

I guess you can fix it by removing the ajax thing while using opera mini. Anyway I've been thinking of creating a small android app for downloading fanfic in epub when I get some free time. I guess I'll get around to it soon.

 

Yes, also don't trust the Opera Mini Emulator which is available on the Opera website. Your site seemed to work fine on it while the Opera Mini Next [btw. Next = latest beta] on my phone does not. I think there's a difference in the way the Emulator handles traffic compared to a live install.

Opera Mini requests a page from a website, and it's then sent to Opera's proxy servers. Then Opera's servers execute the scripts on the page [best effort within a brief time limit], render the page, convert it to OBML and send that compressed and cut-down version to the Opera Mini user. It's essentially static, not unlike a pdf.

http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/opera-mini-and-javascript/

Opera Mini is a vital browser in regions of the world with crappy mobile network access and/or severely limited data allowances. That's another reason I prefer to rely on downloaded epubs rather than the mobile phone network being 100% accessible for the time I'm reading a fic.

Opera seems to handle downloading files quite alright though. The epubs I downloaded through your site were fine.

I'm not a dev, let alone a web dev, so I apologise in advance for this potentially ignorant and wrong-headed suggestion:

When your site converts a fic, does it store the fic on your server? It seems to, at least for a short while. How about using a cookie [or some other way of identifying a unique device/user] and showing that user a list of links to the last 5 fics they've converted [or all fics they've processed in the last few minutes]? That way, even if there's been a hiccup in the process, they can just hit refresh and access their personal download links.

 

Alright, i'll try doing something without ajax for mobiles users, and will add the last 5 fics list you asked, seemed like a good idea to me.

---------- Post automerged at 08:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:43 PM ----------

Here we go...

Can you test it for me please

http://www.p0ody-files.com/ffnet_to_epub/mobile/

 

These big fics work.

https://m.fanfiction.net/s/9250630/15/Stalker-Zero
https://m.fanfiction.net/s/6051581/1/Quagmire

This little one did not.

https://m.fanfiction.net/s/9226905/1/

edit: an error about not being able to find the first chapter.

will write more after work.

 

It's annoying, this fic works on localhost but not on my webhost -_-...

Will try to find the trouble.

---------- Post automerged at 07:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:51 PM ----------

Seems like preg_match has a character limit of 100k on my webhost (and can't change it) and probably higher on my localhost.

And this fic has a loooonnnggg chapter (~110k chars).

So i changed my way of getting chapter text...

Should be working now.

 

p0ody, I'd just like to point out that this tool is fantastic and working as intended, even on Opera Mini. I'm overseas at the moment and both the epub conversion and "last five fics" have saved me at different times.

Thank you.

http://www.p0ody-files.com/ffnet_to_epub/mobile/

 

For those using this, I am sorry for the down time.

I switched web host and had some trouble with my domain. Should be fixed now and with a new version!

I'll have to fix the mobile version, I'll do it tomorrow.

 

I use this. I didn't notice the downtime, but thanks for re-hosting and keeping this service running. Much appreciated.

 

Some fics don't download properly. I find that fics which has any special characters in the title is not downloading properly at least in the mobile site. Not sure about the desktop site.

 

This is far better than Flagfic. Flagfic certainly didn't have archive or top10.
Also, tried downloading a fic and it told me there was already an epub to download, which was updated to the latest chapter. That was quite cool =D

 

Yeah, i added this to minimize the data pulled from FF.net, so if someone already asked for the same fic as you, and the file is made with lastest update then it just use this one again.

---------- Post automerged at 06:54 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:41 PM ----------

*** Mobile version is up and should be working.