How to download WIX javascript gallery images?

February 24, 2014 4:22 PM

I'm trying to help my cousin migrate his WIX photography site to an actual host. His backup drive with all of his photos died and the only place these images exist is on wix, who doesn't support downloading the content. I tried httrack and a couple online website rippers but none are able to pull the images. Is there any way I can avoid doing this the amazingly hard way?
posted by mrflibble to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

I flat couldn't believe there wasn't a way around this, but their support forums are full of threads asking the same question, all meeting with the same response "no, you can't do this but what a great idea for a future release."

All except this guy, who suggests creating a new static HTML website with the images, then loading the website up in a browser and right-click-saving all of the images. Painful, but if you could get all those photos on one honkin' site (less the Flash interface), you could use one of those site rippers to pull them all down in one fell swoop.

What a crazy model.
posted by jquinby at 4:47 PM on February 24, 2014

Response by poster: jquinby: I know, despicable right? Thanks for the link, hadn't seen that one among the many others asking the question. Hopefully it works.
posted by mrflibble at 5:02 PM on February 24, 2014

this is not a specific answer to your question, but the firefox plugin download them all will simplify downloading the images if you build a custom page.
posted by phil at 5:09 PM on February 24, 2014

Response by poster: phil: Thank you, saves me from digging around download.cnet and trying to pick one out of the hundreds :)
posted by mrflibble at 5:15 PM on February 24, 2014

You may also find HTTrack to be of use- It downloads all content, not just images, and it's open-sourced under the GPL.
posted by anemone of the state at 11:40 PM on February 24, 2014

The problem with wix is that it makes heavy use of AJAX for just about everything meaning HTTrack likely won't be able to scrape the site. Your best bet is to ask on stackoverflow how to scrape images from a wix site - be sure and specify the images are important because you can scrape a cached page snapshot that won't include the images.
posted by srboisvert at 7:56 AM on February 25, 2014

What's the url of the site?
posted by artlung at 8:52 AM on February 27, 2014