Internet Archive
June 18, 2026 路 View on GitHub
Mode: 馃寪 Public 路 Domain: archive.org
Commands
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
opencli archive search <query> | Search Internet Archive items across books, movies, audio, software, and web |
opencli archive item <identifier> | Fetch metadata for a single Internet Archive item by identifier |
opencli archive wayback <url> | Look up the closest Wayback Machine snapshot for a URL |
opencli archive snapshots <url> | List Wayback Machine snapshots over time for a URL via the CDX API |
Usage Examples
# Full-text search across all mediatypes (default sort by downloads)
opencli archive search "machine learning" --limit 10
# Restrict to a mediatype
opencli archive search "newton principia" --mediatype texts --limit 5
opencli archive search "moon landing" --mediatype movies --sort date --limit 5
# Single item metadata
opencli archive item open-syllabus
opencli archive item FinalFantasy2_356
# Closest Wayback snapshot, optionally near a date
opencli archive wayback wikipedia.org
opencli archive wayback wikipedia.org --timestamp 2015
# Wayback CDX history for a URL
opencli archive snapshots wikipedia.org --limit 20
opencli archive snapshots wikipedia.org --from 2010 --to 2015 --limit 50
# JSON output
opencli archive search "machine learning" -f json
search Options
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
query (positional) | Full-text query (matches title, description, creator, subject) |
--mediatype | texts / movies / audio / software / image / web / data / collection |
--sort | downloads (default) / date / addeddate / week / title |
--limit | Max items (1-100, default: 20) |
Returns rows with rank, identifier, title, creator, date, mediatype, downloads, url. The identifier round-trips into opencli archive item <identifier>.
item Options
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
identifier (positional) | Archive item identifier (letters, digits, ".", "_", "-") |
Returns one row with identifier, title, creator, date, mediatype, collection, description, file_count, url.
wayback Options
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
url (positional) | URL to look up (with or without scheme) |
--timestamp | Target timestamp (YYYY[MM[DD[hh[mm[ss]]]]] or ISO date). Defaults to most recent snapshot |
Returns one row with original_url, requested_timestamp, snapshot_timestamp, snapshot_url, status. The snapshot_url round-trips into a regular browser fetch.
snapshots Options
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
url (positional) | URL to look up (with or without scheme) |
--from | Earliest digit-only timestamp |
--to | Latest digit-only timestamp |
--limit | Max snapshots (1-1000, default: 20) |
Returns rows with timestamp, snapshot_url, status, mimetype, original_url. Each snapshot_url is a direct Wayback Machine permalink. The CDX endpoint is served over HTTP only; the HTTPS endpoint returns 503 in practice.
Prerequisites
- No browser required; uses public archive.org APIs (Advanced Search, Metadata, Wayback Available, CDX).