MTG Visual Spoiler/Image Gallery Downloader

[woogerboy21]

For all you that can't seem to wait for the gatherer to be updated (let alone HQ Images) during spoiler season, I thought I would throw together something. I generally just use this in a script form but put an HTA front end on it for ease of usage. This hta file will download the files from a visual spoiler from the wizards.com site.

Screenshot:


Program:
v0.1 - Added As Attachment
v0.2 - Added As Attachment
v0.3 - Added As Attachment
v0.4 - Added As Attachment
v0.5 - Added As Attachment
v0.6 - Added As Attachment
v0.7 - Added As Attachment
v0.8 - Added As Attachment

Make sure you have write permissions on what ever folder you specify as the "Image Save Folder" path. If you run into issue's trying to copy files into somewhere like c:\program files\ try using something like c:\temp\ that you are sure you have proper permissions on. I noticed in vista with certain security settings in place it fails to return proper error codes and descriptions making it about impossible to verify success of failure when certain calls are made.


NOTE
If you receive the following error (or similar)


Please choose "no".
If you do not wish to see this message please follow these steps: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/175500
See below for program update details.

I strongly encourage users to download any new images that are available in HQ using the torrent file provided by http://www.slightlymagic.net (and peered by many supporters).
If you are wanting images that are already available from the the gatherer, please use the this application to do so.
**Please see post below for older set image name files**

[woogerboy21]

Updates:
v0.1
Initial release. Simple functionality. Probably Buggy!

v0.2
Corrected Internal Name
Corrected Internal Version Numbering
Corrected Bug when "Image Save Folder" did not exist and does not properly exit.
Added resume capabilities from last image number on.

v0.3
Corrected Display Names
Added MTG Visual Spoiler Renamer to the zip. This hta will rename the files to the magic album file name. Read the "howto" on what needs to be created first.

v0.4
Complete App Rewrite!
The application should work with the new visual spoiler page layouts. It downloads the entire page content and will parse for all images with the selected extension. It then saves the images to either the save image folder path or a "newimages" folder based on user selection. With the new way wizards of the coast is creating image names they have made it a bit harder to do an image to card name determination but you can define the image to card name now in a file so that during the download process, if the image name is defined it will be saved using the file name definition. (see the imagenames.txt file for examples)

v0.5
Minor internal code changes to better assist in updating the external "imagenames.txt" file during visual spoiler rollouts (newimage names get appended to the end of the imagenames.txt file with a name definition of UnknownCard#.jpg)
Added the second download URL path to allow for another page that contains images such as "tokens" to be downloaded
Added the ability to define a line delimiter for each type of image file that exists on a page you are pulling images from
UI Adjustments due to new items

v0.6
Added the .reg file to the distrobution. Import this into your registry and reboot to prevent the popup described in the forum post
imagenames.txt updated to include all images for the scars of mirrodin visual spoiler set

v0.7
Added multilanguage support for downloading images other than english
Updated internal version coding

v0.8
Download routines updated to increase download speed performance
Added "Save Images Numerically" option, this option will append a numeric number infront of the downloaded images starting with 000 and increamenting each time an image is downloaded. This allows for the images to be stored in the filing system in order making it easier to update the imagenames file to reflect the card images to names.

[woogerboy21]

Good news! I have updated the visual spoiler downloader. (Well actually rewrote it).
This should now work with the newer layouts (as well as the older ones) that wizards is using. Though naming the files from the image names on the site to card names is a bit trickier. Check out the updated "howto". I took a much simpler approach on this one and should work for even future changes (fingures crossed) to the visual spoiler pages. With the way it allows you to define the image name to local file name you can now name the cards to whatever application you intend on using the image with. (Magic Album or Magic Workstation for example.)


Remember.... Version 0.3 and prior has problems with the visual spoiler pages from the Magic 2011 visual spoilers and all sets aftewords. Please use version 0.4 an newer for the most recent sets!

[woogerboy21]

Added the MBS image names that have been released to date. Probably will update again in a couple days once a larger number of images have been released.

[Marek14]

The full Visual Spoiler for MBS should be up tomorrow.

[woogerboy21]

The full Visual Spoiler for MBS should be up tomorrow.

Tomorrow being wednesday (or thursday - dont know what time zone your in)? Wizards has only officially spoilered 87 of the 155 cards. In any case the day that wizards spoilers all the cards (which I am expecting to be thursday) I will complete the txt file and post it.

[kristijanH]

Should be tomorrow morning - around 8 maybe 9 hours from now.

[Marek14]

It's up.

[woogerboy21]

It's up.

Complete spoiler has been released by wizards and the text file listing of MBS cards are now all adding in the "MBS Released Image Names 01262011.zip" attachment. Download the app and the updated cardlist and have it

[zeka711]

hi,

is it possible to download other then the english cards?
via a fix?
visual spoilers for other languages are similar.
i.e. for german cards only the suffix is changed from "_en.jpg" to "_de.jpg".
the imagenames.txt could easy adjusted, only a search & replace needed.

regards,
ck

[woogerboy21]

hi,

is it possible to download other then the english cards?
via a fix?
visual spoilers for other languages are similar.
i.e. for german cards only the suffix is changed from "_en.jpg" to "_de.jpg".
the imagenames.txt could easy adjusted, only a search & replace needed.

regards,
ck

The actual HTA simply parses a web page and locates all the image links from the HTML code that matches the inputed file name extension (jpg by default). Then saves the card images locally. Before saving it parses the .txt file and compares the name of the located image to any known actual card in the .txt file list and names the image according to the .txt files located information. So if you wanted to download an alternate language it is possible. Depending on how the images on the page are actually named for the language would determin how the .txt file containing the card images to card names would need to be written up in .txt file for naming the cards accordingly. Most likely the image names for alternate language on the wizards website are named differently so the entire .txt file for alternate languages would need recreated. Its not that difficult. If you run the HTA against the alternate language page it should pull the card images and any image that doesnt have a diffinition in the .txt file it will add a new line putting the image name and an "Unknown" image name in the .txt file that you can look at the card and edit the .txt file adding the card image name next to the actual image file name. Then re-run the HTA and it should redownload and name the images accordingly.

[zeka711]

hello,

renameing is not the problem.
changes to the "imagenames.txt" is a 2-second task.
i.e. "b0egpqoyqe_en.jpg" is "b0egpqoyqe_de.jpg"
only two characters are different, as well as for other languages (jp, fr, pt ...) pics.
but the default (picture)language is the issue.
if i call the spoiler url with the browser i get the german pics.
probably the website recognize any language / country settings?
but your tool grabs / downloads the engl. card-pictures.

anyway, someone did the rename-work before,
in the meanwhile i found a source for (german) mbs, som card-pics,
allready renamed.

but a language-switch could still be usefull for other people / languages,
or further editions.

regards
ck

[woogerboy21]

hello,

renameing is not the problem.
changes to the "imagenames.txt" is a 2-second task.
i.e. "b0egpqoyqe_en.jpg" is "b0egpqoyqe_de.jpg"
only two characters are different, as well as for other languages (jp, fr, pt ...) pics.
but the default (picture)language is the issue.
if i call the spoiler url with the browser i get the german pics.
probably the website recognize any language / country settings?
but your tool grabs / downloads the engl. card-pictures.

anyway, someone did the rename-work before,
in the meanwhile i found a source for (german) mbs, som card-pics,
allready renamed.

but a language-switch could still be usefull for other people / languages,
or further editions.

regards
ck

This HTA was really designed to be used prior to any of the sets card information becoming available out on the gatherer's website (for those to eager to wait). If the set you are looking for is already out on the gatherer you may want to try one of the gatherer downloader tools such as Ark's version here . It does multilanguage image downloads for cards that have already been released to the gatherer.

[zeka711]

i know & use arks tool,
but....
visual spoiler pics are slightly bigger (265px × 370px)

[Ark]

My app can now pull the CCGHQ images (480x680 pixels) from my website (ark42.com). I have all card images for all sets, in English only though.