zimmer package is primarily a tool for creating a ZIM dump from a Mediawiki-based wiki.

The package consists of 2 scripts:

• wikizimmer.js dumps the wiki's articles (name space 0) into a collection of static HTML files.

• zimmer.js builds a ZIM file from a static HTML files collection. Historically, zimmer.js is mostly a drop-in replacement for zimwriterfs with a notable exception: it doesn't support withFullTextIndex option (index format is not documented).

The major point is that wikizimmer.js unlikely to mwoffliner doesn't depend on the Parsoid and Redis and zimmer.js unlikely to zimwriterfs doesn't depend on the zimlib.

The package is relatively easy to install and it can even process some wikis running rather old versions of the Mediawiki engine.

Installation

Requirement: node version >= 6.x.

With npm globally

npm i -g git+https://github.com/vadp/zimmer

or

Manually

• Clone zimmer from Github or download ZIP
• Install dependencies: npm install
• Make wikizimmer.js and zimmer.js executable
• Optionally symlink both scripts into some directory available in your $PATH:

    ln -s wikizimmer.js <some directory in $PATH>/wikizimmer
    ln -s zimmer.js <some directory in $PATH>/zimmer

Usage

The process of creating a ZIM file from a wiki consists of 2 parts.

Example:

• Dumping a with to a local collection of static HTML files:

wikizimmer https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Pisa

will dump all https://en.wikivoyage.org articles to the directory en.wikivoyage.org. The URL to a particular page is quite important in this case as this page's styling is used as a template for all other pages in the dump, so wikivoyage listings, for example, are rendered correctly at the static page of the dump.

• Building a ZIM file:

zimmer --optimg en.wikivoyage.org

will pack the content of the en.wikivoyage.org into the en.wikivoyage.org.zim. zimmer.js with --optimg option will recompress the images in the dump to save some space.

Command line options

Run either of scripts with '--help' switch to see the list of all options available:

$ wikizimmer -h

  Usage: wikizimmer [options] <wiki-page-URL>

  Dump a static-HTML snapshot of a MediaWiki-powered wiki.

  Where:
    wiki-page-URL        URL of a sample page at the wiki to be dumped.
                         This page's styling will be used as a template for all pages in the dump.

  Options:

    -V, --version  output the version number
    -t, --titles   get only titles listed (separated by "|")
    -r, --rmdir    delete destination directory before processing the source
    -noimages      don't download images
    -nocss         don't page styling
    -nopages       don't save downloaded pages
    -h, --help     output usage information

$ zimmer -h

  Usage: zimmer [options] <source-directory> [zim-file...]

  Pack a directory into a zim file

  Where:
    source-directory     path to the directory with HTML pages to pack into a ZIM file
    zim-file             optional path for the output

  Options:

    -V, --version              output the version number
    -w, --welcome <page>       path of default/main HTML page. The path must be relative to HTML_DIRECTORY
    -f, --favicon <file>       path of ZIM file favicon. The path must be relative to HTML_DIRECTORY and the image a 48x48 PNG
    -l, --language <id>        language code of the content in ISO639-3
    -t, --title <title>        title of the ZIM file
    -d, --description <text>   short description of the content
    -c, --creator  <text>      creator(s) of the content
    -p, --publisher  <text>    creator of the ZIM file itself
    -v, --verbose              print processing details on STDOUT
    -m, --minChunkSize <size>  number of bytes per ZIM cluster (default: 2048)
    -x, --inflateHtml          try to inflate HTML files before packing (*.html, *.htm, ...)
    -u, --uniqueNamespace      put everything in the same namespace "A". Might be necessary to avoid problems with dynamic/javascript data loading
    -r, --redirects <path>     path to the CSV file with the list of redirects (url, title, target_url tab separated)
    --optimg                   optimise images
    --jpegquality <factor>     JPEG quality
    -h, --help                 output usage information

NB: The most options of the zimmer.js are really optional if it's used in combination with wikizimmer.js as the later one saves the relevant metadata into the dump directory. Perhaps only --optimg is quite important one if you want to save some space.