Items and metadata

Every item on archive.org has a metadata record and a set of files. archive gives you three views of it: item for a summary, metadata for the raw record, and files for the file listing.

A friendly summary

archive item nasa

item pulls the identifier, title, mediatype, file count, total size, the hosting server, and the details URL into one short table. It is the fastest way to see what an identifier actually is.

The raw metadata record

archive metadata nasa

This prints the full JSON document the Metadata API returns: the metadata block, the files array, server and directory info, and timestamps. Pipe it into jq for anything specific, or let archive pull a single field for you by passing a slash-path subpath:

archive metadata nasa metadata/title       # just the title
archive metadata nasa metadata             # just the metadata block
archive metadata nasa files                 # just the files array

Listing files

archive files nasa

Each row is one file: name, size, format, and md5. Narrow the listing with a shell glob on the name or a substring match on archive's format field:

archive files nasa --glob '*.jpg'
archive files principleofrelat00eins --format PDF

The output composes like everything else:

archive files nasa --glob '*.jpg' -o url          # direct download URLs
archive files nasa --fields name,size -o csv       # a size report

View counts and task history

Two more item-scoped commands round this out:

archive views nasa                  # all-time / 30-day / 7-day view counts
archive views nasa goody jeffm!     # several items at once

archive tasks nasa                  # the catalog / derive task history

views is anonymous. tasks needs credentials unless you own the item, because the task queue is private; without them the Archive returns 401 and archive exits with code 4.