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Xavier Roche 9e29c1e159 Sitemap files are never read, so URLs nothing links to are never found (#718) 
* Read sitemap files so URLs nothing links to are found

HTTrack finds URLs only by parsing links, so anything a site publishes solely
in its sitemap stayed invisible: robots.txt was already parsed, but its
Sitemap: lines were ignored and nothing else in the tree touched sitemaps.

Adds opt-in --sitemap (-%m), which probes the start host's robots.txt and
falls back to /sitemap.xml, and --sitemap-url (-%mu) for an explicit document.
Handles <urlset> and nested <sitemapindex>, plain or gzipped. Discovered URLs
enter with the full depth budget but still go through the wizard, so filters
and scope rules decide; a sitemap is not a filter bypass.

The parser reads attacker-controlled XML off the network, so it is capped on
URL count, index nesting, decompressed size and decompression ratio, and child
sitemaps must stay on the host that named them.

Closes #712

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Signed-off-by: Xavier Roche <roche@httrack.com>

* sitemap: distinguish the sitemapindex log line from a urlset one

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Signed-off-by: Xavier Roche <roche@httrack.com>

* sitemap: fix an out-of-bounds read, tighten the parser and the tests

lienrelatif() walked back from the last character of its current-path
argument without checking the path was non-empty, reading one byte before
the stack buffer. htsAddLink is the first caller to pass an empty savename,
which sitemap documents have because they are ingested rather than mirrored,
so ASan caught it on the new crawl test.

The parser drops a value whose numeric character reference decodes outside
printable ASCII, rather than leaving the reference verbatim and seeding a URL
the site never published, and classifies a document by its real root element,
so a comment naming the other one no longer flips urlset and sitemapindex.
The robots.txt line reader is bounded by the body size instead of relying on
a NUL terminator.

The self-test moves to 01_zlib-sitemap.test: MSan runs 01_engine-* only,
because an uninstrumented libz floods it with false positives.

Tests gain the assertions the earlier ones were missing: which of the
robots.txt route and the /sitemap.xml fallback was taken, that the sitemap
documents stay out of the mirror, that the off-host child sitemap is refused,
the sitemapindex nesting cap, the per-document URL cap at its production
value, and copy_htsopt coverage for the two new fields.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Signed-off-by: Xavier Roche <roche@httrack.com>

* sitemap: state what the decompression cap actually binds on

deflate tops out near 1032:1, so hts_codec_maxout never binds before the
64 MiB cap; the old comment implied a ratio guard that cannot fire.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Signed-off-by: Xavier Roche <roche@httrack.com>

* sitemap: a child sitemap is a fetch, so filters and robots.txt must gate it

An adversarial review found that a <sitemapindex> <loc>, and a robots.txt
Sitemap: line, went straight to hts_record_link: the request went out even
when a -* rule or robots.txt Disallow covered it. Only the <urlset> half ran
through the wizard. Gate the document itself on the filters and on
robots.txt, which is all that can apply: the wizard proper wants a referring
link, and its up/down travel rules would judge a child sitemap against the
parent sitemap's own directory. The robots.txt probe is exempt, being the
request that fetches the rules.

A 301 also used to end ingestion silently, since the engine re-queues the
target as a fresh link that carried no sitemap marking. That hit any site
redirecting http to https. The marking now follows the redirect.

The "N URL(s) added" counter reported what the scanner emitted rather than
what was taken, which hid both of the above; it now reads "N of M". The
fallback to /sitemap.xml keys on the same corrected count, so a robots.txt
whose only Sitemap: line is off-host or filtered still falls back. Root
classification skips a UTF-8 BOM and an XML namespace prefix, and the doc
list is cleared when a mirror starts rather than only when it ends.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Signed-off-by: Xavier Roche <roche@httrack.com>

* sitemap: gate each fetch by who asked for it, and anchor travel on the start URL

A nine-agent review found a scope escape: the sitemap document was its own
`premier`, so the wizard measured travel from wherever the site chose to put
its sitemap. A root /sitemap.xml therefore widened a /deep/dir/ crawl to the
whole host. The ingester now points the wizard at the crawl's own start link
and lets each seeded URL become its own anchor, which is what a command-line
seed gets.

Robots handling was both mistimed and undifferentiated. The Sitemap: lines are
now collected by robots_parse, on the same body in the same fetch, and acted on
after the parsed rules are installed rather than before; and the decision comes
from a new hts_robots_forbids extracted out of the wizard, so the sitemap path
inherits the -s1 filters-win override instead of a stricter hand-rolled check.
The four fetches are no longer treated alike: a sitemap the user names is user
intent, one the site declares invites the fetch, only the guessed /sitemap.xml
obeys a Disallow, and the URLs listed inside stay fully gated.

Also: hts_unescapeEntities replaces the private entity decoder, whose guard
tests and fuzz corpus it silently forfeited; hts_codec_head replaces hts_zhead,
which is only defined under HTS_USEZLIB; the composed URL buffer now fits two
maximal components plus a scheme, which a 2046-byte --sitemap-url reached; the
bounded search is promoted to htstools as hts_memstr; and the live state moves
from httrackp into htsoptstate, leaving two installed fields rather than three.

Tests gain the scope escape, the three robots cases, a cap-boundary control,
the handler invocation count and a compression-bomb decode. Every one was
checked against a deliberately broken build.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Signed-off-by: Xavier Roche <roche@httrack.com>

* sitemap: add the fuzz harness the parser was missing, and drop truncated Sitemap: lines

The file header called the scanner fuzzable while fuzz/ registered ten
harnesses and none for it. fuzz-sitemap feeds it raw XML, gzip-framed bodies
and truncated streams off a heap copy of exactly the input size, so an overread
is an ASan report rather than a quiet pass, with a four-file seed corpus.
60000 runs clean under ASan+UBSan.

robots_parse now drops a Sitemap: line that filled its scratch buffer instead
of handing on the half URL it was truncated to.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Signed-off-by: Xavier Roche <roche@httrack.com>

* fuzz: keep only the four sitemap seed inputs

A libFuzzer run writes its finds into the first corpus directory, and 191 of
them were committed with the harness.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Signed-off-by: Xavier Roche <roche@httrack.com>

* selftest: bound the sitemap document builders' snprintf accumulation

snprintf returns the length it wanted to write, so accumulating it blind
lets the next offset and size argument walk past the buffer. Guard each
step the way the argv builder above already does, and give the per-URL
loop a real remaining-space bound instead of a fixed 33.

Signed-off-by: Xavier Roche <xroche@gmail.com>
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Signed-off-by: Xavier Roche <roche@httrack.com>

* sitemap: date the new files 2026

The headers were copied from an existing file and kept its 1998 year.

Signed-off-by: Xavier Roche <xroche@gmail.com>
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Signed-off-by: Xavier Roche <roche@httrack.com>

* sitemap: keep the ingestion state out of htsoptstate

htsoptstate is embedded by value as httrackp.state, so a field at its tail
shifts every httrackp member declared after it: an offsetof probe put
warc_file at 141752 on master and 141760 on the branch. Move the pointer to
httrackp's own tail, where every existing offset holds and copy_htsopt still
ignores it.

Also renumber the crawl test to 89, master having taken 87 and 90, and give
the new option8 checkbox the hidden companion that 90_webhttrack-checkbox-clear
requires, plus its row in that test's table.

Signed-off-by: Xavier Roche <xroche@gmail.com>
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Signed-off-by: Xavier Roche <roche@httrack.com>

* tests: renumber the sitemap crawl test to 95

Master took 88 through 93 and #720 claims 94.

Signed-off-by: Xavier Roche <xroche@gmail.com>
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Signed-off-by: Xavier Roche <roche@httrack.com>

* sitemap: realign the htsopt.h comments after the single-file merge

Master's longer LLint declarator moved the block's comment column.

Signed-off-by: Xavier Roche <xroche@gmail.com>
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Signed-off-by: Xavier Roche <roche@httrack.com>

* sitemap: translate the new GUI strings into the remaining 28 locales (#738)

The feature PR added the four LANG_SITEMAP* entries to lang.def with English
and Francais only; every other locale fell back to English in the WebHTTrack
form. Each file is written in its own declared charset.

Signed-off-by: Xavier Roche <roche@httrack.com>
Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

---------

Signed-off-by: Xavier Roche <roche@httrack.com>
Signed-off-by: Xavier Roche <xroche@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-27 07:59:59 +02:00

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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<meta name="description" content="HTTrack is an easy-to-use website mirror utility. It allows you to download a World Wide website from the Internet to a local directory,building recursively all structures, getting html, images, and other files from the server to your computer. Links are rebuiltrelatively so that you can freely browse to the local site (works with any browser). You can mirror several sites together so that you can jump from one toanother. You can, also, update an existing mirror site, or resume an interrupted download. The robot is fully configurable, with an integrated help" />
<meta name="keywords" content="httrack, HTTRACK, HTTrack, winhttrack, WINHTTRACK, WinHTTrack, offline browser, web mirror utility, aspirateur web, surf offline, web capture, www mirror utility, browse offline, local site builder, website mirroring, aspirateur www, internet grabber, capture de site web, internet tool, hors connexion, unix, dos, windows 95, windows 98, solaris, ibm580, AIX 4.0, HTS, HTGet, web aspirator, web aspirateur, libre, GPL, GNU, free software" />
<title>HTTrack Website Copier - Offline Browser</title>
<style type="text/css">
<!--
body {
margin: 0; padding: 0; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-top: 8px;
background: #77b;
}
body, td {
font: 14px "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
#subTitle {
background: #000; color: #fff; padding: 4px; font-weight: bold;
}
#siteNavigation a, #siteNavigation .current {
font-weight: bold; color: #448;
}
#siteNavigation a:link { text-decoration: none; }
#siteNavigation a:visited { text-decoration: none; }
#siteNavigation .current { background-color: #ccd; }
#siteNavigation a:hover { text-decoration: none; background-color: #fff; color: #000; }
#siteNavigation a:active { text-decoration: none; background-color: #ccc; }
a:link { text-decoration: underline; color: #00f; }
a:visited { text-decoration: underline; color: #000; }
a:hover { text-decoration: underline; color: #c00; }
a:active { text-decoration: underline; }
#pageContent {
clear: both;
border-bottom: 6px solid #000;
padding: 10px; padding-top: 20px;
line-height: 1.65em;
background-image: url(images/bg_rings.gif);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-position: top right;
}
#pageContent, #siteNavigation {
background-color: #ccd;
}
.imgLeft { float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; }
.imgRight { float: right; margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; }
hr { height: 1px; color: #000; background-color: #000; margin-bottom: 15px; }
h1 { margin: 0; font-weight: bold; font-size: 2em; }
h2 { margin: 0; font-weight: bold; font-size: 1.6em; }
h3 { margin: 0; font-weight: bold; font-size: 1.3em; }
h4 { margin: 0; font-weight: bold; font-size: 1.18em; }
.blak { background-color: #000; }
.hide { display: none; }
.tableWidth { min-width: 400px; }
.tblRegular { border-collapse: collapse; }
.tblRegular td { padding: 6px; background-image: url(fade.gif); border: 2px solid #99c; }
.tblHeaderColor, .tblHeaderColor td { background: #99c; }
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// -->
</style>
</head>
<table width="76%" border="0" align="center" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" class="tableWidth">
<tr>
<td><img src="images/header_title_4.gif" width="400" height="34" alt="HTTrack Website Copier" title="" border="0" id="title" /></td>
</tr>
</table>
<table width="76%" border="0" align="center" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" class="tableWidth">
<tr>
<td id="subTitle">Open Source offline browser</td>
</tr>
</table>
<table width="76%" border="0" align="center" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" class="tableWidth">
<tr class="blak">
<td>
<table width="100%" border="0" align="center" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td colspan="6">
<table width="100%" border="0" align="center" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="10">
<tr>
<td id="pageContent">
<!-- ==================== End prologue ==================== -->
<h2 align="center"><em>Command-Line Guide</em></h2>
<p>This is a task-oriented guide to the <tt>httrack</tt> command line: how to do the
things people actually ask for, and the handful of defaults that surprise
newcomers. It sits on top of the
<a href="httrack.man.html">generated manual page</a>, which lists every option in
full. When you want the exhaustive detail for a flag, that page is the reference;
this one is the map.</p>
<p>Two habits before anything else. First, HTTrack has its own options: they are not
wget or curl flags, so reach for the tables here rather than guessing. Second,
when a mirror does something you did not expect, the answer is almost always in
the log. Every project writes <tt>hts-log.txt</tt> (and <tt>hts-err.txt</tt>) into
its output directory, and those files name every URL that was refused, redirected,
or filtered out. Read them first.</p>
<h4>On this page</h4>
<ul class="tblNoBorder">
<li><a href="#quickstart">1. Quick start</a></li>
<li><a href="#scope">2. Scope: how far the crawl reaches</a></li>
<li><a href="#filters">3. Filters and scan rules</a></li>
<li><a href="#limits">4. Limits and politeness</a></li>
<li><a href="#names">5. File names and types</a></li>
<li><a href="#links">6. Links and page building</a></li>
<li><a href="#identity">7. Identity, cookies and login</a></li>
<li><a href="#proxy">8. Proxy and network</a></li>
<li><a href="#update">9. Update and cache</a></li>
<li><a href="#experts">10. Experts and scripting</a></li>
<li><a href="#recipes">11. Recipes</a></li>
</ul>
<h3 id="quickstart">1. Quick start</h3>
<p>A mirror is one command: a start URL and an output directory.</p>
<p><tt>httrack https://example.com/ --path mydir</tt></p>
<p>With no other options HTTrack mirrors that site, stays on the same host, follows
links to any depth, rebuilds them to browse offline, and stores everything under
<tt>mydir</tt>. The same directory also holds the log files and the
<tt>hts-cache/</tt> folder that makes a later update or resume possible.</p>
<p>Two defaults are worth knowing up front, because both catch people out:</p>
<ul>
<li>HTTrack throttles itself to about <b>100 KB/s</b> even when you pass no rate
option. If a mirror feels slow, that is why. See
<a href="#limits">Limits</a> for how to lift it.</li>
<li>The download proceeds as a well-behaved robot: it identifies itself as
<tt>HTTrack</tt>, obeys <tt>robots.txt</tt>, and sends a Referer with each
request. A site that blocks that behavior needs the levers in
<a href="#identity">Identity</a>, not brute force.</li>
</ul>
<h3 id="scope">2. Scope: how far the crawl reaches</h3>
<p>Scope decides which links HTTrack is even willing to follow, before any filter
you write. Get this right and most "it downloaded too much" or "it only grabbed
the index" problems disappear.</p>
<table class="tblRegular tableWidth" border="0">
<tr class="tblHeaderColor"><td><b>Option</b></td><td><b>What it controls</b></td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--depth (-r)</tt></td><td>Maximum link depth. <b>The start page is level 1</b>, so one level of links out is <tt>-r2</tt>, not <tt>-r1</tt>.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--stay-on-same-address (-a), --stay-on-same-domain (-d), --stay-on-same-tld (-l), --go-everywhere (-e)</tt></td><td>How far off the starting host the crawl may travel: same address (host), same principal domain, same top-level domain (for example .com), or everywhere. The default keeps you on the starting host.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--can-go-down (-D), --can-go-up (-U), --stay-on-same-dir (-S), --can-go-up-and-down (-B)</tt></td><td>Directory travel: down into subdirectories only, up to parent directories only, stay in the same directory, or both up and down.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--near (-n)</tt></td><td>Also fetch non-HTML files "near" a followed link, such as an image linked from a page you kept but hosted elsewhere.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--ext-depth (-%e)</tt></td><td>How many levels of external links to follow once the crawl leaves your scope (default 0).</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--test (-t)</tt></td><td>Also HEAD-test links that fall outside the scope, which are normally refused, without downloading them: a way to see what scope is excluding.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--sitemap (-%m), --sitemap-url URL (-%mu)</tt></td><td>Also take start URLs from the site's sitemap, for pages nothing links to. Off by default.</td></tr>
</table>
<p>Link-following only finds what something links to. Anything a site publishes
solely in its sitemap is invisible to HTTrack unless you ask for it.
<tt>--sitemap</tt> reads the start host's <tt>robots.txt</tt> for
<tt>Sitemap:</tt> lines and falls back to <tt>/sitemap.xml</tt>;
<tt>--sitemap-url</tt> names one directly. Nested <tt>sitemapindex</tt> files
and gzipped <tt>.xml.gz</tt> sitemaps are followed. The URLs found become start
URLs with the full depth budget, but they still go through your filters and
scope rules, so a sitemap cannot widen a crawl you deliberately narrowed. It is
off by default because a sitemap can list thousands of pages nothing links
to.</p>
<p>One surprise worth knowing: a sitemap you name with <tt>--sitemap-url</tt>,
and one the site itself declares in <tt>robots.txt</tt>, are fetched even when
<tt>robots.txt</tt> disallows that path, because naming or declaring a sitemap
is an invitation to read it. Only the guessed <tt>/sitemap.xml</tt> obeys a
<tt>Disallow</tt>. The URLs listed inside are gated normally either way.</p>
<p>The single most common surprise is "only the home page came down." That is
usually not a scope option at all: it is an off-host redirect. A start URL of
<tt>http://example.com/</tt> that redirects to <tt>https://www.example.com/</tt>
lands you on a different host, and same-host scope stops the crawl there. Start
from the final URL, or add a filter that re-admits the real host (see
<a href="#filters">Filters</a>). The log will show the redirect.</p>
<p><tt>-n</tt> is the fix for pages that render locally without their images or
stylesheets: it lets HTTrack pull in requisites that sit just outside scope. Note
that its embedded-asset handling (following <tt>img</tt>, <tt>link</tt>,
<tt>script</tt>, <tt>style</tt> and HTML5 <tt>source</tt>/<tt>track</tt> targets
past the normal depth and filter limits) applies only when <tt>-n</tt> is on; it
is not automatic. It can also over-fetch by dragging in a whole external host from
a single link, in which case name the assets you want with a filter instead.</p>
<h3 id="filters">3. Filters and scan rules</h3>
<p>Filters are the number-one source of confusion, and also the tool that solves
most scope problems once you understand them. A filter is a rule that accepts
(<tt>+</tt>) or rejects (<tt>-</tt>) URLs by pattern. The sign is mandatory:
<tt>+pattern</tt> adds, <tt>-pattern</tt> removes, and a bare pattern is an error.</p>
<p>The rules that matter:</p>
<ul>
<li><b>Last match wins.</b> Rules are applied in order and the last one that
matches a URL decides its fate. Order your rules from general to specific.</li>
<li><b>Wildcards.</b> <tt>*</tt> matches any run of characters;
<tt>*[a-z]</tt>, <tt>*[0-9]</tt> and similar classes match sets. So
<tt>+*.pdf</tt> means "any URL ending in .pdf".</li>
<li><b>Whitelisting.</b> To keep one site and nothing else, deny everything then
re-admit the host: <tt>"-*" "+example.com/*"</tt>. A lone <tt>+</tt> rule only
adds to the default scope; it never restricts.</li>
<li><b>Size rules.</b> <tt>*[&gt;100000]</tt> and <tt>*[&lt;1000]</tt> filter by
byte size. Because size is only known once the transfer starts, an oversize file
is fetched partway and then aborted, not skipped for free.</li>
<li><b>mime: rules.</b> A rule like <tt>-mime:video/*</tt> matches the
<tt>Content-Type</tt>. That type is only known after the response headers arrive,
so a mime rule <b>cannot stop a request</b>; it can only abort the body. Use a
URL pattern when you want to avoid the fetch entirely.</li>
</ul>
<p>Quote your filters. Shells treat <tt>*</tt>, <tt>[</tt> and sometimes <tt>+</tt>
specially, so wrap each rule in quotes as shown above. The full pattern language,
with tables for wildcards, size and mime, is in
<a href="filters.html">the filters page</a>, and the
<a href="faq.html">FAQ</a> has a worked tutorial.</p>
<p><b>robots.txt.</b> By default HTTrack obeys <tt>robots.txt</tt> (<tt>-s2</tt>).
<tt>-s0</tt> ignores it entirely, <tt>-s1</tt> obeys it but lets one of your
<tt>+</tt> filters override a disallow for a URL you explicitly asked for. Note
that a <tt>403 Forbidden</tt> is a server refusal, not a robots rule: robots
options will not help there. That is an
<a href="#identity">identity</a> problem.</p>
<h4>Filter wildcards</h4>
<p>Inside a filter pattern, <tt>*</tt> matches any run of characters; a few
bracket forms match narrower sets. The full table, with size and mime rules, is on
<a href="filters.html">the filters page</a>.</p>
<table class="tblRegular tableWidth" border="0">
<tr class="tblHeaderColor"><td><b>Wildcard</b></td><td><b>Matches</b></td><td><b>Example</b></td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>*</tt></td><td>any run of characters</td><td><tt>+*.pdf</tt> &mdash; any URL ending <tt>.pdf</tt></td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>*[file]</tt>, <tt>*[name]</tt></td><td>one path segment (any char but <tt>/</tt> and <tt>?</tt>)</td><td><tt>example.com/*[file]/</tt> &mdash; a directory-index page</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>*[path]</tt></td><td>a path, slashes allowed (any char but <tt>?</tt>)</td><td><tt>example.com/*[path].zip</tt></td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>*[param]</tt></td><td>an optional query string</td><td><tt>page.html*[param]</tt> matches with or without <tt>?...</tt></td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>*[a,b,c]</tt></td><td>any one character in the set</td><td><tt>*[a,b,c].txt</tt></td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>*[a-z]</tt></td><td>any one character in the range</td><td><tt>img*[0-9].gif</tt></td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>*[\x]</tt></td><td>the literal character x (escapes <tt>* [ ] \</tt>)</td><td><tt>*[\*]</tt> matches a real <tt>*</tt></td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>*[&lt;NN]</tt>, <tt>*[&gt;NN]</tt></td><td>file size in KB below / above NN</td><td><tt>-*.gif*[&lt;5]</tt> skips GIFs under 5&nbsp;KB</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>*[]</tt></td><td>end anchor: nothing may follow</td><td><tt>*.html*[]</tt> rejects <tt>i.html?p=1</tt></td></tr>
</table>
<h3 id="limits">4. Limits and politeness</h3>
<p>HTTrack ships cautious on purpose: it is easy to hammer a small site by
accident, and the <a href="abuse.html">abuse page</a> is worth a read. The limits
below let you go faster when you own the target, and slower when you do not.</p>
<table class="tblRegular tableWidth" border="0">
<tr class="tblHeaderColor"><td><b>Option</b></td><td><b>What it controls</b></td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--max-rate (-A)</tt></td><td>Maximum transfer rate in bytes/sec. <b>The default is about 100 KB/s even without this flag.</b> Raise it to go faster.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--sockets (-c)</tt></td><td>Number of parallel connections (default 4). <tt>--tiny</tt>, <tt>--wide</tt> and <tt>--ultrawide</tt> are presets.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--connection-per-second (-%c)</tt></td><td>New connections opened per second (default 5).</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--max-size (-M)</tt></td><td>Stop after N bytes <b>received from the network</b> across the whole mirror (this counts what was transferred, not what was saved).</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--max-time (-E)</tt></td><td>Stop after N seconds of wall-clock time.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--max-files (-m)</tt></td><td>Per-file size caps.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--timeout (-T), --retries (-R), --min-rate (-J), --host-control (-H)</tt></td><td>Idle timeout, retry count, minimum acceptable rate, and host-ban behavior for slow or dead hosts.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--max-pause (-G), --pause (-%G)</tt></td><td>Pause the mirror at N bytes, or pause between files, to spread the load.</td></tr>
</table>
<p><b>The security clamps.</b> To keep an accidental typo from turning into a flood,
HTTrack silently caps a few values: at most 8 connections (<tt>-c</tt>), at most
10 MB/s (<tt>-A</tt>), and at most 5 new connections per second (<tt>-%c</tt>).
Ask for more and you get the ceiling, quietly. The single flag
<tt>--disable-security-limits</tt> lifts all three (the short form <tt>-%!</tt>
also works, but the bare <tt>!</tt> is awkward to type safely in a shell). Use it
only against infrastructure you are allowed to load that hard.</p>
<h3 id="names">5. File names and types</h3>
<p>Where local files land, and what they are called, is controlled by the naming
options. This is the second-biggest source of "why did it do that" questions,
usually about a URL like <tt>/article?id=42</tt> or a <tt>.php</tt> page that is
really HTML.</p>
<table class="tblRegular tableWidth" border="0">
<tr class="tblHeaderColor"><td><b>Option</b></td><td><b>What it controls</b></td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--structure (-N)</tt></td><td>The local path and name layout. Presets are numeric, and you can also give a template such as <tt>--structure "%h%p/%n%q.%t"</tt>.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--long-names (-L)</tt></td><td>Long names, 8.3 names, or ISO9660 for CD masters.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--assume (-%A)</tt></td><td>Assume a MIME type for an extension, for example <tt>--assume php=text/html</tt>. This also skips the extra HEAD probe HTTrack would otherwise send to learn the type.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--delayed-type-check (-%N), --cached-delayed-type-check (-%D), --check-type (-u), -%t</tt></td><td>When and how the content type is checked, and whether the original extension is kept.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--include-query-string (-%q), --strip-query (-%g)</tt></td><td>Whether the query string appears in the local filename, and whether query keys are stripped when deciding if two URLs are the same file.</td></tr>
</table>
<p>The <tt>-N</tt> presets are built from modular arithmetic on the name fields, so
undocumented number combinations often "work" by accident. If you care about the
exact layout, use an explicit template (the <tt>%h %p %n %q %t</tt> placeholders)
rather than a magic number, and check the result on a small crawl first.</p>
<p>A dynamic page served as <tt>.php</tt> or <tt>.asp</tt> that is actually HTML is
the classic case: without help it can be saved with an extension a browser will
not open locally. <tt>--assume php=text/html</tt> fixes both the extension and the
naming.</p>
<h3 id="links">6. Links and page building</h3>
<p>After a page is downloaded, HTTrack parses it for more links and rewrites the
ones it kept so the local copy browses offline. These options tune both halves.</p>
<table class="tblRegular tableWidth" border="0">
<tr class="tblHeaderColor"><td><b>Option</b></td><td><b>What it controls</b></td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--keep-links (-K)</tt></td><td>How links are rewritten in saved pages. The numbering is inverted from what you might guess: bare <tt>-K</tt> keeps <b>absolute</b> URLs, and <tt>-K0</tt> is the <b>relative</b> default. <tt>-K3</tt> keeps absolute URIs, <tt>-K4</tt> keeps the original links.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--replace-external (-x), --generate-errors (-o)</tt></td><td>Replace external links with an error page, and generate an error page for links that failed.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--preserve (-%p), --disable-passwords (-%x)</tt></td><td>Leave HTML untouched (no rewriting), and strip passwords out of saved links.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--extended-parsing (-%P), --parse-java (-j)</tt></td><td>Aggressive link discovery, and how much script content is parsed for links.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--mime-html (-%M)</tt></td><td>Save the whole mirror as a single MIME-encapsulated <tt>.mht</tt> archive (<tt>index.mht</tt>).</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--single-file (-%Z), --single-file-max-size N</tt></td><td>Once the mirror is finished, rewrite every saved page with its stylesheets, scripts, images and fonts embedded as <tt>data:</tt> URIs. Assets over the cap (10&nbsp;MB by default) keep their link, as do audio, video, and the links from one page to another. A sibling of <tt>-%M</tt>, not a replacement: see the recipe below for which to pick.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--index (-I), --build-top-index (-%i), --search-index (-%I)</tt></td><td>Build a per-mirror index, a top index across projects, and a searchable keyword index.</td></tr>
</table>
<p>HTTrack finds links by parsing HTML and CSS. It does not run JavaScript, so any
URL a page builds at runtime in script (a lazy-loaded image, a
JavaScript-assembled path) is invisible to the crawler and will be missing from
the mirror. There is no flag that fixes this; the asset has to appear in the
static HTML or CSS to be found. <tt>-%P</tt> widens discovery for links that are
present but awkwardly formatted, not for links that do not exist until script
runs.</p>
<h3 id="identity">7. Identity, cookies and login</h3>
<p>By default HTTrack is an honest robot: it sends a <tt>User-Agent</tt> of
<tt>HTTrack</tt>, a Referer with each link (which reveals the crawl path to the
server), and obeys robots. Plenty of sites filter exactly that profile. These
options control what HTTrack says about itself.</p>
<table class="tblRegular tableWidth" border="0">
<tr class="tblHeaderColor"><td><b>Option</b></td><td><b>What it controls</b></td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--user-agent (-F)</tt></td><td>The <tt>User-Agent</tt>. Set a browser string to get past crawler blocks; <tt>--user-agent ""</tt> sends none.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--referer (-%R), --from (-%E), --language (-%l), --accept (-%a)</tt></td><td>Referer, From, Accept-Language and Accept headers.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--headers (-%X)</tt></td><td>Add raw header lines to every request.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--footer (-%F)</tt></td><td>A footer written into saved pages (on disk, not a network header). See <b>Footer fields</b> below.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--cookies (-b), --cookies-file (-%K)</tt></td><td>Accept cookies, and preload a Netscape <tt>cookies.txt</tt>.</td></tr>
</table>
<p><b>Footer fields.</b> A footer with no <tt>%s</tt> may reference named fields:
<tt>{addr}</tt>, <tt>{path}</tt>, <tt>{url}</tt>, <tt>{date}</tt> (mirror time),
<tt>{lastmodified}</tt> (the page's Last-Modified), <tt>{version}</tt>,
<tt>{mime}</tt>, <tt>{charset}</tt>, <tt>{status}</tt> and <tt>{size}</tt>; write
<tt>{{</tt> or <tt>}}</tt> for a literal brace. A footer that contains <tt>%s</tt>
keeps the older positional form (host, path, date in that order). Example:
<tt>-%F "&lt;!-- Mirrored from {url} on {date} --&gt;"</tt>.</p>
<p><b>Login.</b> For HTTP Basic auth, put the credentials in the URL:
<tt>http://user:pass@host/</tt>. An <tt>@</tt> inside the username must be written
<tt>%40</tt>. Only Basic is supported, not Digest.</p>
<p>For cookie or form logins, the simplest path is to log in with a browser, export
its <tt>cookies.txt</tt>, and drop that file in the project directory so HTTrack
sends the session cookie. For a form that needs a POST, <tt>--catchurl</tt> can
capture the exact request your browser sends and replay it. A few cookie caveats
to know: expiry is ignored, there is a silent cap of about 8 cookies sent per
request, and <tt>-b0</tt> disables cookies and the reuse of Basic credentials
across links at the same time.</p>
<h3 id="proxy">8. Proxy and network</h3>
<table class="tblRegular tableWidth" border="0">
<tr class="tblHeaderColor"><td><b>Option</b></td><td><b>What it controls</b></td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--proxy (-P)</tt></td><td>Route through a proxy. HTTP, SOCKS5 and CONNECT are supported: <tt>-P host:8080</tt>, <tt>-P socks5://host:1080</tt>, <tt>-P connect://host:443</tt>, with optional <tt>user:pass@</tt>.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--httpproxy-ftp (-%f)</tt></td><td>Send FTP requests through the HTTP proxy.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--protocol (-@i)</tt></td><td>Prefer IPv4 or IPv6.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--http-10 (-%h), --keep-alive (-%k), --disable-compression (-%z)</tt></td><td>Force HTTP/1.0 (drops keep-alive and compression, useful for fragile CGI), toggle keep-alive, and toggle compression.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--bind (-%b), --tolerant (-%B)</tt></td><td>Bind to a local address, and accept technically-bogus responses some servers send.</td></tr>
</table>
<p>Two network facts worth stating plainly. Over SOCKS5, HTTrack always resolves
host names at the proxy (remote DNS) for both <tt>socks5://</tt> and
<tt>socks5h://</tt>, so your local resolver is never consulted. And HTTrack does
not verify TLS certificates: HTTPS gives you an encrypted transport, but not an
authenticated one. That is a deliberate choice for a mirroring tool, not a bug,
but it is worth knowing if you are relying on it for trust.</p>
<h3 id="update">9. Update and cache</h3>
<p>Every project keeps a cache under <tt>hts-cache/</tt>. It records every URL that
was fetched, together with the options you used, and it is what makes resuming and
updating possible. It is not a size-limited scratch area you can delete: throw it
away and you lose the ability to continue or update the mirror.</p>
<table class="tblRegular tableWidth" border="0">
<tr class="tblHeaderColor"><td><b>Option</b></td><td><b>What it controls</b></td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--continue</tt></td><td>Carry on an interrupted mirror, trusting the cache: it does not re-check pages already stored.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--update</tt></td><td>Re-run the mirror, revalidating each page with the server (If-Modified-Since / If-None-Match) and downloading only what changed.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--purge-old=0 (-X0)</tt></td><td>Do not purge. By default an update deletes local files that are no longer part of the mirror; <tt>--purge-old=0</tt> keeps them.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--cache (-C)</tt></td><td>Cache mode. The default already does the right thing and switches to update-checking when it detects an existing mirror.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--urlhack (-%u), --keep-www-prefix (-%j), --keep-double-slashes (-%o), --keep-query-order (-%y), --do-not-recatch (-%n), --updatehack (-%s), --store-all-in-cache (-k)</tt></td><td>URL-deduplication behavior and cache storage details.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--debug-cache (-#C), --repair-cache (-#R), --clean</tt></td><td>Inspect the cache, repair its ZIP, and erase cache plus logs.</td></tr>
</table>
<p><b>The purge trap.</b> An <tt>--update</tt> run rebuilds the list of files the
mirror should contain, then deletes any previously-mirrored file that is not on the
new list. This is what keeps a mirror in sync with a shrinking site, but it means a
partial or interrupted update can delete files you meant to keep. If an update might
not complete cleanly, add <tt>-X0</tt> to protect the existing tree, and expect
dynamic pages to look "changed" on every run. See the
<a href="cache.html">cache page</a> for the details.</p>
<h3 id="experts">10. Experts and scripting</h3>
<p>HTTrack is also a scriptable fetch-and-scan tool. These options turn off the
mirror behavior and expose the engine.</p>
<table class="tblRegular tableWidth" border="0">
<tr class="tblHeaderColor"><td><b>Option</b></td><td><b>What it controls</b></td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--get URL</tt></td><td>Fetch a single file and stop. Cache, index, depth, cookies and robots are all off for this mode.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--spider --testlinks --skeleton</tt></td><td>Scan without saving, test links at depth 1, or keep HTML only. Handy for checking a site before a real crawl.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--userdef-cmd (-V)</tt></td><td>Run a shell command on each downloaded file; <tt>$0</tt> is the file path. Good for on-the-fly processing.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--callback (-%W)</tt></td><td>Load an external callback module to hook the engine.</td></tr>
<tr><td><tt>--do-not-log (-Q), --quiet (-q), --verbose (-v), --file-log (-f), --extra-log (-z), --debug-log (-Z)</tt></td><td>Logging: quiet, no questions, verbose on screen, and the various log-to-file levels.</td></tr>
</table>
<p>The <a href="dev.html">developer page</a> covers the callback API and batch use
in more depth.</p>
<h3 id="recipes">11. Recipes</h3>
<p>Copy-ready command lines for the tasks people ask about most. Each has the one
gotcha that trips it up.</p>
<h4>Mirror one site, nothing off-host</h4>
<p><tt>httrack https://example.com/ --path mydir</tt><br>
<small>Same-host is already the default. The usual failure is a
<tt>www.</tt>-to-apex or <tt>http</tt>-to-<tt>https</tt> redirect that moves you off
host and stops the crawl; start from the final URL, or add
<tt>"+finalhost/*"</tt>.</small></p>
<h4>One level of links only</h4>
<p><tt>httrack https://example.com/ --depth=2 --path mydir</tt><br>
<small>Depth counts the start page as level 1, so one level out is <tt>--depth=2</tt>.</small></p>
<h4>This site only, deny everything else</h4>
<p><tt>httrack https://example.com/ "-*" "+example.com/*" --path mydir</tt><br>
<small>You must deny-all first; a lone <tt>+</tt> only adds, and the last matching
rule wins.</small></p>
<h4>Download the PDFs on a site</h4>
<p><tt>httrack https://example.com/ "-*" "+https://example.com/*.html" "+https://example.com/*[path]/" "+https://example.com/*.pdf" --path mydir</tt><br>
<small>HTTrack finds PDFs by parsing the site's HTML, so a plain
<tt>"-*" "+example.com/*.pdf"</tt> is wrong: it prunes the pages that carry the
links and keeps only PDFs reachable from the front page. Instead admit the HTML as
scaffolding (<tt>*.html</tt> and <tt>*[path]/</tt> for directory-index pages at any
depth, e.g. <tt>docs/</tt> or <tt>a/b/deep/</tt>; <tt>*[file]/</tt> would stop at one
level), keep the PDFs, and let <tt>-*</tt> drop everything else (images,
archives, off-site assets). PDFs on another host (a CDN or docs subdomain) are not
included by default; allow that host too, e.g. <tt>"+docs.example.com/*.pdf"</tt>,
or widen to <tt>"+*.pdf"</tt> for PDFs anywhere.</small></p>
<h4>Keep page requisites, including off-host images</h4>
<p><tt>httrack https://example.com/blog/ --near --path mydir</tt><br>
<small><tt>--near</tt> can over-fetch by pulling in an entire external host from one
link; if it does, name the assets with <tt>"+cdn.example.com/*"</tt> instead.</small></p>
<h4>Resume an interrupted crawl</h4>
<p><tt>httrack --continue --path mydir</tt><br>
<small>Needs an intact <tt>hts-cache/</tt>. Deleting it loses the URL list and your
options.</small></p>
<h4>Update a mirror, downloading only what changed</h4>
<p><tt>httrack --update --path mydir</tt><br>
<small>Purge deletes any previously-mirrored file not seen this run; add
<tt>--purge-old=0</tt> to protect the tree against a partial update.</small></p>
<h4>Reach a section behind a login cookie</h4>
<p><small>Export your browser's <tt>cookies.txt</tt> into the project directory,
then:</small><br>
<tt>httrack https://example.com/members/ --path mydir</tt><br>
<small>The file must be Netscape <tt>cookies.txt</tt> in the project folder;
<tt>--cookies=0</tt> would disable cookies and Basic-auth reuse together.</small></p>
<h4>Get past a crawler-UA block</h4>
<p><tt>httrack https://example.com/ --user-agent "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0)" --path mydir</tt><br>
<small>A 403 is server-side, not robots: change the User-Agent, and add
<tt>--http-10</tt> for fragile CGI. Do not reach for <tt>--robots=0</tt>.</small></p>
<h4>Full-speed mirror on your own server</h4>
<p><tt>httrack https://example.com/ --max-rate=2000000 --sockets=8 --disable-security-limits --path mydir</tt><br>
<small>The default throttles to about 100 KB/s. <tt>--disable-security-limits</tt>
lifts the built-in caps; use it only against infrastructure you are allowed to
load.</small></p>
<h4>Save a WARC archive of the crawl</h4>
<p><tt>httrack https://example.com/ --warc --path mydir</tt><br>
<small>Writes a standard WARC/1.1 file (<tt>httrack-&lt;timestamp&gt;.warc.gz</tt>) in
the project folder alongside the browsable mirror, not instead of it. Set the name
with <tt>--warc-file NAME</tt> and split a large crawl with <tt>--warc-max-size N</tt>;
add <tt>--warc-cdx</tt> for a sorted CDXJ index, or <tt>--wacz</tt> to bundle the
archive, index and pages into one WACZ for replay tools such as
replayweb.page.</small></p>
<h4>See what a re-crawl changed</h4>
<p><tt>httrack https://example.com/ --update --changes --path mydir</tt><br>
<small>Writes <tt>hts-changes.json</tt> in the project folder, listing every
mirrored file as new, changed, unchanged or gone, plus a one-line summary in the
log. &quot;Changed&quot; means the bytes really differ: a server that answers 200
with the same content it served last time lands in <tt>unchanged</tt>. Deletions
are reported whether or not <tt>--purge-old</tt> is deleting them. The format is
documented in <a href="changes.html">the change report specification</a>.</small></p>
<h4>Pages you can hand to someone as one file</h4>
<p><tt>httrack https://example.com/ --single-file --path mydir</tt><br>
<small>Rewrites each saved page after the crawl so its stylesheets, scripts,
images and fonts are embedded as <tt>data:</tt> URIs. The mirror stays a normal
browsable tree, with links between pages relative and the assets still on disk,
but any single <tt>.html</tt> file can now be mailed or archived on its own.
Raise or lower the 10&nbsp;MB per-asset limit with
<tt>--single-file-max-size N</tt>; anything over it, plus audio and video, keeps
its link. One caveat if you raise it: an inlined stylesheet becomes a
<tt>data:</tt> URL, whose path is opaque, so an asset it referenced that stayed
over the cap no longer resolves from inside it. Raising the cap past that asset
embeds it too and the question goes away.<br>
Reach for this when the file has to open for someone you cannot make assumptions
about: it is plain HTML and needs no add-on. Reach for <tt>--mime-html</tt>
instead when a Chromium-family browser is a given and the mirror is large: MIME
carries text parts without the base64 tax, keeps each resource's original URL,
and stores a shared asset once rather than re-embedding it in every page that
uses it.</small></p>
<h4>HTTrack as a fetch tool</h4>
<p><tt>httrack --get https://host/file.bin --path tmp</tt><br>
<small><tt>--get</tt> fetches one file with cache, index, depth, cookies and robots
all disabled.</small></p>
<p><br>For the complete, always-current option list, see
<a href="httrack.man.html">the manual page</a>. For the filter language, see
<a href="filters.html">filters</a>; for the cache and updates, see
<a href="cache.html">cache</a>; for the change report, see
<a href="changes.html">changes</a>.</p>
<!-- ==================== Start epilogue ==================== -->
</td>
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</table>
</td>
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</table>
</td>
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</table>
<table width="76%" border="0" align="center" valign="bottom" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td id="footer"><small>&copy; 1998-2026 Xavier Roche & other contributors - Web Design: Leto Kauler.</small></td>
</tr>
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