Archive public LiveJournal journals — posts, threaded comments, and inline images — to local JSON or browsable HTML. No login required. Resumable. Fetches in parallel (40 connections by default). Useful for backing up a journal before deletion, offline reading, or text analysis.
Ships a CLI plus a Go library:
ljp— fetcher / CLIpkg/lj— the underlying library
go install github.com/wpt/ljp/cmd/ljp@latestOr grab a prebuilt binary from the Releases page (linux/darwin/windows on amd64/arm64).
In examples below, news is a LiveJournal username (the official news journal) — substitute any public journal.
# Single post (by ID or URL)
ljp news/166511
ljp https://news.livejournal.com/166511.html
ljp https://users.livejournal.com/_user_/12345.html # underscore usernames
# With comments, saved to a file
ljp --comments -o post.json news/166511
# Entire journal (JSONL to stdout)
ljp news
# Post selection (ordinal: 1 = oldest)
ljp news 1-10 # first 10 posts
ljp news 1,5,100 # specific posts
ljp news @166511 # by LJ ID
ljp news @256,@166511 # multiple LJ IDs
ljp news @256-@100000 # LJ ID range
ljp news 2019/05 # one month (archive pages)
ljp news 2019/01-2020/06 # month range
# Journal info
ljp --count news # indexable post count
ljp --first news # oldest post (exponential + binary search)
ljp --last news # newest post
# Bulk archive — typical workflow
ljp --comments --images ./img --dir ./posts news # posts + comments + local images
ljp --resume --dir ./posts news # resume an interrupted run
ljp --latest 5 --dir ./posts news # 5 newest posts
ljp --latest-with-comments 5 --dir ./posts news # 5 newest posts that have replies
ljp --concurrency 20 --dir ./posts news # gentler parallelism (default 40)
# Format & images
ljp --format markdown news/166511 # body as Markdown
ljp --format text news/166511 # body as plain text
ljp --images ./img news/166511 # download images, rewrite <img src>
# Render as a styled, self-contained HTML page with threaded comments
ljp --render --comments -o post.html news/166511
ljp --render --comments --dir ./posts news # one {id}.html per post + index.html
# Verbose (debug) logging to stderr
ljp -v news/166511| Flag | Description |
|---|---|
--comments |
Include comments |
--count |
Show indexable post count and exit |
--first |
Fetch the oldest post (HEAD-probe + binary search) |
--last |
Fetch the newest post |
--latest <N> |
Fetch the N newest posts |
--latest-with-comments <N> |
Fetch the N newest posts that have at least one comment |
--format html|markdown|text |
Body format, applied to post and comment bodies (default: html) |
--images <dir> |
Download images (from post and comment bodies) to directory and rewrite <img src> to local paths |
--render |
Output as a self-contained HTML page (use with -o or --dir; with --dir also writes an index.html table of contents) |
--resume |
Skip posts already in --dir in the current output format ({id}.html with --render, else {id}.json) |
--concurrency <N> |
Max concurrent HTTP connections / fan-out width (default 40) |
--pretty |
Pretty-print JSON (default true; pass --pretty=false for compact) |
-o <file> |
Output to file (default: stdout) |
--dir <dir> |
Output directory (one {id}.json or {id}.html per post) |
-v |
Verbose (debug-level) logging to stderr |
--version |
Print version and exit |
Run ljp -h for the full list.
When combining --render, --dir, and --images, run your browser from the
working directory you invoked ljp in — downloaded <img src> paths are written
relative to that directory, not to each {id}.html file.
Single post: pretty JSON to stdout. Multiple posts (without --dir): JSONL — pretty-printed by default; pass --pretty=false for one compact object per line. With --dir, each post becomes {dir}/{id}.json (or {id}.html with --render; a browsable {dir}/index.html listing every saved post, newest first, is regenerated after each completed run).
{
"id": 166511,
"url": "https://news.livejournal.com/166511.html",
"title": "Post Title",
"date": "December 17 2024, 16:01",
"date_unix": 1734451260,
"author": "news",
"body": "<p>Post content...</p>",
"tags": ["updates"],
"comments": [
{
"id": 10193184,
"talk_id": 10193184,
"parent_id": 0,
"level": 1,
"author": "User Display Name",
"username": "user_login",
"date": "December 17 2024, 17:02",
"date_unix": 1734454920,
"body": "Comment text..."
}
]
}children appears only on parents whose replies you also fetched; Post-level
reply_count and og and Comment fields subject, userpic, deleted are
omitted when zero/empty.
import (
"context"
"log"
"log/slog"
"os"
"github.com/wpt/ljp/pkg/lj"
)
client := lj.NewClient()
// Optional: structured progress logging. nil (default) is silent.
client.Logger = slog.New(slog.NewTextHandler(os.Stderr, nil))
// Options — set BEFORE the first fetch; they're read inside ParsePost.
client.BodyFormat = lj.FormatMarkdown // FormatHTML (default), FormatMarkdown, FormatText
client.ImagesDir = "./images" // download images locally
ctx := context.Background()
// Single post + comments
post, err := lj.ParsePost(ctx, client, "news", 166511)
if err != nil {
log.Fatal(err)
}
post.Comments, err = lj.ParseComments(ctx, client, "news", 166511)
if err != nil {
log.Fatal(err)
}
_ = post // use post.Title, post.Body, post.Comments, ...
// Journal operations
_, _ = lj.FindFirstPostID(ctx, client, "news") // oldest post (HEAD-probe + binary search)
_, _ = lj.FindLastPostID(ctx, client, "news") // newest post
_, _ = lj.FetchPostIndex(ctx, client, "news") // ?skip= pages, fast but caps at LJ's index limit
_, _ = lj.FetchFullPostIndex(ctx, client, "news") // monthly archives, exhaustive
_, _ = lj.FetchMonthlyPostIndex(ctx, client, "news", 2019, 5, 2019, 6) // archives for May-June 2019
// Stream all posts with a callback (sequential — for parallel use FetchFullPostIndex + ParsePost yourself).
if err := lj.ParseJournal(ctx, client, "news", true, func(p *lj.Post) error {
// process each post
return nil
}); err != nil {
log.Fatal(err)
}git clone https://github.com/wpt/ljp
cd ljp
go build ./cmd/ljp/
go test ./...Tests use httptest.Server and do not hit the network.