Paper Getting Tool

A Python script to download competition problem sets from URLs and stitch the images together vertically into a single combined image.

Features

• Downloads competition problem pages from a list of URLs
• Extracts images from the pages in order
• Stitches images vertically to create a single combined image
• Saves output images to the output/ directory with properly sanitized filenames
• Includes retry mechanisms and proper error handling

Requirements

• Python 3.x
• requests
• BeautifulSoup4
• Pillow (PIL)
• re (for sanitizing filenames)

Setup

1. Install the required packages:

pip install requests beautifulsoup4 pillow

2. Activate your virtual environment (recommended):

source .venv/bin/activate  # On Linux/Mac
# or
.venv\Scripts\activate     # On Windows

3. Create a target_urls file with the URLs you want to process, one per line

4. Run the script:

python paper_getter.py

File Descriptions

• paper_getter.py: Main script that handles newer page structures (post-2021)

  • Designed to handle current page layouts
  • Looks for elements with classes content-desc and content-text

• paper_getter_old.py: Specialized script for 2021 and earlier competition problems

  • Only capable of extracting competition problem images from 2021
  • Does not support competition problem retrieval for years prior to 2020
  • Handles older page structures with classes like newsMain-content-title

Output

Processed images are saved in the output/ directory with filenames based on the competition title and a timestamp to prevent duplicates.

Notes

• The script adds delays between requests to be respectful to the server
• Images are saved in PNG format to preserve quality
• Filenames are sanitized to remove potentially problematic characters