[readcomiconline] gallery-dl no longer downloads

[godlike64]

It would seem that readcomiconline.li no longer works. gallery-dl does not seem to do anything:

$ gallery-dl -v "https://readcomiconline.li/Comic/BRZRKR/Issue-11?id=209334"
[gallery-dl][debug] Version 1.27.2-dev
[gallery-dl][debug] Python 3.11.8 - Linux-6.6.21-gentoo-x86_64-AMD_Ryzen_7_2700_Eight-Core_Processor-with-glibc2.38
[gallery-dl][debug] requests 2.31.0 - urllib3 2.2.1
[gallery-dl][debug] Configuration Files []
[gallery-dl][debug] Starting DownloadJob for 'https://readcomiconline.li/Comic/BRZRKR/Issue-11?id=209334'
[readcomiconline][debug] Using ReadcomiconlineIssueExtractor for 'https://readcomiconline.li/Comic/BRZRKR/Issue-11?id=209334'
[urllib3.connectionpool][debug] Starting new HTTPS connection (1): readcomiconline.li:443
[urllib3.connectionpool][debug] https://readcomiconline.li:443 "GET /Comic/BRZRKR/Issue-11?id=209334&quality=hq HTTP/1.1" 200 None
$ 

Have tried using the --cookies-from-browser parameter with both firefox and chrome values. Cookies are recognized but gallery-dl behaves the same.

Tested with current master as of just now.

[mikf]

They changed their URL obfuscation code by quite a bit and, even worse, today's method is different from yesterday's. Let's hope this is going to stop at some point and it doesn't keep changing every day.

[godlike64]

That's a bummer... I'll keep an eye on this issue, let me know if any testing might be needed.

[godlike64]

Not sure if it will help, but I spent some time trying to figure out what it's doing. So the final images seem to be hosted on blogspot and their URL never changes, what changes every time you load the page is the horridly obfuscated javascript bit from the page (starting at line 569 here), e.g.:

<script type="text/javascript">
        var _4ZlJegF = new Array();
        var _xGEvMod = new Array();
        var pth = '';
        
        pth = '5jtSFp0RUR0E0aZdTJpeHIzMmQ3WjE0SFLTleRzH3YEMFpMIezppMVRHeFRJMEZhaVZLLUplVDRzdHo5Y0tKMHFpb0I0UzV0bDd0aWZwS0ttMTVzNHdCeG9xT1BwYzJMVXVIVDBVd1lJVlVHVUc1VEZrNGY5TVk3SkNkdUM4aFJGbF9mdmJPdXFXV1Z1Rng0UDF4UXBTV0I2em1Va2lWcmE5MER0Z3JbZaVwUJVgw=s0?rhlupa=OTUuMjIuMTEzLjEyOS43LzIwLzIwMjQgNjo1Mzo0MyBBTQ&rnvuka=TW96aWxsYS81LjAgKFgxMTsgTGludXggeDg2XzY0OyBydjoxMjUuMCkgR2Vja28vMjAxMDAxMDEgRmlyZWZveC8xMjUuMA';

        
        pth = pth.replace(/b/g, 'pw_.g28x');
        pth = pth.replace(/h/g, 'd2pr.x_27');
        _4ZlJegF.push('https://2.bp.blogspot.com/5jtSFp0RUR0E0aZdTJpeHIzMmQ3WjE0SFLTleRzH3YEMFpMIezppMVRHeFRJMEZhaVZLLUplVDRzdHo5Y0tKMHFpb0I0UzV0bDd0aWZwS0ttMTVzNHdCeG9xT1BwYzJMVXVIVDBVd1lJVlVHVUc1VEZrNGY5TVk3SkNkdUM4aFJGbF9mdmJPdXFXV1Z1Rng0UDF4UXBTV0I2em1Va2lWcmE5MER0Z3JbZaVwUJVgw=s0');
        _xGEvMod.push(pth);
       [...]

Further down dinnerTime(_xGEvMod, ''); is issued, this appears to be always issued on the second array that is defined. dinnerTime is defined in the previous custom script and uses the beau() function which seems to come from
https://readcomiconline.li/Scripts/rguard.min.js?v=1.5.1 (again, even more horridly obfuscated, although its content seems to be static).

In this particular example (the first image when loading the comic from the link I posted earlier), the link to the actual image is https://2.bp.blogspot.com/u2ixr32d7Z14HGxTI0FaiVK-JeT4stz9cKJ0qioB4S5tl7tifpKKm15s4wBxoqOPpc2LUuHT0UwYIVUGUG5TFk4f9MY7JCduC8hRFl_fvbOuqWWVuFx4P1xQpSWB6zmUkiVra90Dtg=s0?rhlupa=OTUuMjIuMTEzLjEyOS43LzIwLzIwMjQgNjo0NDowMSBBTQ&rnvuka=TW96aWxsYS81LjAgKFgxMTsgTGludXggeDg2XzY0OyBydjoxMjUuMCkgR2Vja28vMjAxMDAxMDEgRmlyZWZveC8xMjUuMA

Some parts of this link are present in the obfuscated code, but of course not everything. I'm guessing those pth.replace() calls plus whatever the beau() function does is what eventually generates the final URL for the browser to open, but I've been unable to reproduce it on a js console.

[mikf]

Should be fixed for now, until they change things again: 7b445ec

[godlike64]

Yup, it's fixed! Many thanks! I was about to whip up some Selenium crawler of my own xD