nvl-cli

nvl-cli is mainly a program to store local copies of online webnovels.

Chapters of these novels are stored on disk for later perusing. The main use case for this is to be able to read them without an active and persistent Internet connection.

It supports multiple webnovel sources, such as RoyalRoad, FreeWebNovel and LibRead. Support for these backends is provided by libwebnovel.

It also has been built in the idea of not trusting the source: chapters may be revised (which is good!) or deleted outright (which is less good for the reader, better for the author), for instance in the case of a publishing deal.

There are already quite a few similar efforts made by people worldwide (including me! That's not my first attempt at solving the offline reading issue), but I have often been disappointed, whether due to a lack of documentation, difficulty in adapting the code, or missing features.

Installation

From releases

You can have a look at the release page and grab the corresponding binary for your platform.

With cargo

$ cargo install nvl-cli
<trucated_output>
$ nvl --help
A program to download webnovels

Usage: nvl <COMMAND>

Commands:
  update       Update all novels with their new chapters, downloading them as necessary
  add          Add a novel to be watched
  list         List all currently watched novels
  delete       Delete a novel from watch list
  self-update  Attempts to update itself if a new version is available
  help         Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)

Options:
  -h, --help     Print help
  -V, --version  Print version

Usage

Add some novels to follow:

$ nvl add https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/21220/mother-of-learning

Then periodically call nvl update (either by hand or a scheduled task by your OS):

$ nvl update

The chapter files are in your $XDG_DATA_DIR, for instance $HOME/.local/share on many linuxes.

EPUB generation is planned, as well as a simple way to read the chapters in your browser.

TODO

• implement CRUD for novel list:
  • add novel
  • delete novel
  • list novels
• improve CLI interface, for instance with colors.
• download images for the chapters/novels. Most of these novels have at least a cover image.
• handle chapter collisions, where a chapter may be changed and/or deleted. Print a pretty diff & let the user decide whether to update those chapters.
• add ebook generation
• add the ability to open the system's web browser to read chapters:
  • open a chapter from CLI
  • open a webui with an iframe wrapping the chapter and buttons enabling chapter browsing
• provide self-update
• provide OS packages

I also have the kinda stupid dream of making a TUI with ratatui to add, list, delete novels and read chapters.