This is a command line client to interact with the GOG.com api.

The end goal is to automate the backup of game files.

1. Create a file named cookie with the following format:

sessions_gog_com=<value taken from gog.com>
gog-al=<value taken from gog.com>

To get the values, login to gog.com in your browser, then, get the cookie values.

Here is a guide to look at your cookies in Chrome: https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/storage/cookies

The above is needed, because GOG.com does not yet have an official api for third-party tools with user-generated api keys.

So, any tool wishing to get some kind of api token or cookie programatically without a lot of user-involvement will need to scrape information from the login page and circumvent the recaptcha. At best, this functionality would be flaky and subject to frequent malfunction, so I opted not to go that direction, at the risk of being less user-friendly.

2. Go download a binary for your platform and put it in the same directory as your cookie file: https://github.com/Magnitus-/gogcli/releases

3. See what commands currently supported.

For Linux, you can run the following on the command prompt:

./gogcli --help

The client also supports Netscape cookie files. By default, it will use the format defined above, so to use the Netscape format, you need to specify it like so:

./gogcli gog-api user-info -y netscape

A cookie string with values separated by semicolons.

Can be obtained from Chrome by doing:

• Left click Inspect
• Click on Network
• Go to your library page and download a small file
• Click on the request that returned a 302 and select Headers
• Under Request Headers, copy the entire content of the Cookie: header (on the right side) to a file

A Json cookie value generated by firefox.

Can be obtained from Firefox by doing:

• Left click Inspect
• Click on Network
• Go to your library page and download a small file
• Click on the request that returned a 302 and select Cookies
• Under Request Cookies, left-click on the first value and select Copy All
• Paste in a file

If you did it correctly, it should be a json document with the root key having a value of Request Cookies.

The client supports both the filesystem and s3-compatible object stores (tested with Minio, but should be compatible with Ceph, Swift, Amazon S3, Digital Ocean Spaces and others).

If you use the local filesystem, you just need to provided a path to commands.

If you use an s3 store, you need to provide a path to a configuration file in json format which is as follows:

{
    "Endpoint": "<The S3 endpoint of your object store>",
    "Region": "<The S3 region your bucket should be in>",
    "Bucket": "<The bucket in which your manifest and game files should be stored>",
    "Tls": true|false,
    "AccessKey": "<Your access key>",
    "SecretKey": "<Your secret key>"
}

If you prefer, you can build the binary locally:

• Get golang: https://golang.org/dl/
• Run: go build

The documentation below consists of quick howtos.

For a deeper understanding of what the commands do, read the following doc: https://github.com/Magnitus-/gogcli/tree/main/architecture-documentation

Here, I assume that the gogcli binary is in the PATH so that I just type gogcli without having to use a relative path (ex: ./gogcli).

Furthermore, for Windows, the executable would be gogcli.exe, but the commands are otherwise the same.

Note that I'm using the long form arguments in all the examples to make everything more legible, but if you'd like to type less, all the arguments have a short form version, following the POSIX convention.

If I want to generate an initial manifest for Linux and Windows files, for the French and English language, I would type:

gogcli manifest generate --lang=english --lang=french --os=windows --os=linux

This will take a couple of minutes and will produce a manifest.json manifest file.

If GOG.com had some files where not downloadable (they sometimes forget to delete links to files that are no longer available), it will be indicated in the manifest-404-warnings.json file.

You can get a summary of your manifest by typing:

gogcli manifest summary

If you have a very large manifest and want to look for Master of Orion and Master of Magic entries without having to open the file, you can type:

gogcli manifest search --title="Master of Orion" --title="Master of Magic"

So now, you are ready to upload your games in your storage.

If you want to store your games in your filesystem, say in the /home/eric/games directory, you would type:

gogcli storage apply manifest --path=/home/eric/games --storage=fs
gogcli storage execute-actions --path=/home/eric/games --storage=fs

If instead, you have an s3 store whose configuration information is in the file s3.json (see instructions above for how to configure s3 stores), you would type:

gogcli storage apply manifest --path=s3.json --storage=s3
gogcli storage execute-actions --path=s3.json --storage=s3

If you have 1000 games to upload and would like to only upload 50 games for now and do the rest later, you would type:

gogcli storage apply manifest --path=s3.json --storage=s3
gogcli storage execute-actions --path=s3.json --storage=s3 --maximum=50

And if of those 1000 games, you to download your smaller indie games first and Faster Than Light first of all (because it is such a great game), you would first type the following to get FTL's game id:

gogcli manifest search --title=FTL

And then type:

gogcli storage apply manifest --path=s3.json --storage=s3
gogcli storage execute-actions --path=s3.json --storage=s3 --maximum=50 --sort-criterion=size --preferred-ids=1207659102

If you'd like to look at what's left to download, you can download all the actions that have yet to run by typing:

gogcli storage download actions --path=s3.json --storage=s3

The remaining actions will be listed in a file called actions.json.

Then you decide to continue with the next 50 games tomorrow. Lets say you still want to download smaller indie games first, but this time, you'd like to download all the Blackwell games first of all.

First, you will type the following to find out the game id of the Blackwell games:

gogcli manifest search --title=Blackwell

Then, you will type the following to download the next 50 games, with the Blackwell games first

gogcli storage execute-actions--path=s3.json --storage=s3 --maximum=50 --sort-criterion=size --preferred-ids=1207662883 --preferred-ids=1207662893 --preferred-ids=1207662903 --preferred-ids=1207662913 --preferred-ids=1207664393

And so forth...

If, after you have uloaded everything, you get a little paranoid and want to make really sure that the files are still in the state indicated by the manifest, you can type:

gogcli storage validate --path=s3.json --storage=s3

If you don't see any output, you are good.

If you don't trust the tool yet and want feedback that it actually did something, you can type:

gogcli storage validate --path=s3.json --storage=s3 --debug

Be warned, you may get more output than you bargained for.

So now, lets say that you opted for the s3 storage in the example above, but you'd also like to copy your games on your local drive. You can type:

gogcli storage copy --source-path=s3.json --source-storage=s3 --destination-path=/home/eric/games --destination-storage=fs

Again, if you are feeling paranoid, you can validate that the files copied properly at the destination, by typing:

gogcli storage validate --path=/home/eric/games --storage=fs

So now, GOG.com released some updates and you would like very much to update your storages.

Lets say you want to update your filesystem storage first.

You have two choices:

So first, you download your manifest from your storage by typing:

gogcli storage download manifest --path=/home/eric/games --storage=fs

Your manifest will be downloaded in manifest.json.

After that, you get a list of your updated and new games by typing:

gogcli update generate

The game ids of your new and updated games will be listed in updates.json.

After that, you want to update your manifest with your updates, by typing:

gogcli manifest update --update=updates.json

Now, you are ready to apply the modifed manifest. Before that, you may wish to run a plan to look at the actions that will run against your storage by typing:

gogcli storage plan --path=/home/eric/games --storage=fs

Alternatively, if you are ok matching file name and file size couting as the same file when there are no checksums (the gog api doesn't provide it for extras... it should be ok 99.99% of the time), you can type:

gogcli storage plan --empty-checksum --path=/home/eric/games --storage=fs

The actions will be in the actions.json file.

You can apply your modifed manifest by typing:

gogcli storage apply manifest --path=/home/eric/games --storage=fs
gogcli storage execute-actions --path=/home/eric/games --storage=fs

Again, if you wish for extras without checksum to count as the same file if the file name and file size match, you type this instead:

gogcli storage apply manifest --empty-checksum --path=/home/eric/games --storage=fs
gogcli storage execute-actions --path=/home/eric/games --storage=fs

Afterwards, if you want to copy the modifications from your filesystem to your s3 store, you can type:

gogcli storage copy --source-path=/home/eric/games --source-storage=fs --destination-path=s3.json --destination-storage=s3

If you are surprised that it runs really fast, don't worry. The gogcli storage copy command doesn't just mindlessly copy files. It actually does a diff between the manifests of both storages and copies only what it must.

In this case, you'll just generate a new manifest from scratch and apply it.

Generate the manifest by running:

gogcli manifest generate --lang=english --lang=french --os=windows --os=linux

Afterwards, you can look at the actions that will run against your storage by typing:

gogcli storage plan --empty-checksum --path=/home/eric/games --storage=fs

Here, you probably always want to use the empty-checksum flag, because all the extras in your generated manifest won't have a checksum (the gog api doesn't provide it) and it will be a lot of extras to upload (for your entire game collection) if you decide that files with an empty checksum don't count as the same file even when the file name and file size matches.

Anyways, the actions will be listed in the actions.json file.

If you are satisfied with the actions that will run, you can now apply your manifest by typing:

gogcli storage apply manifest --empty-checksum --path=/home/eric/games --storage=fs
gogcli storage execute-actions --path=/home/eric/games --storage=fs

Afterwards, you can copy the changes from your filesystem to your s3 store by typing:

gogcli storage copy --source-path=/home/eric/games --source-storage=fs --destination-path=s3.json --destination-storage=s3

Ok, so you started storing your games from your manifest using the gogcli storage apply command, but it did not complete, either because there was an error or you used the --maximum flag.

You took a break and in the interim, gog updated some games and now you're stuck with a storage that has some half-uploaded manifest that is no longer valid.

What do you do? The same thing you would if there were no pending actions. To recap below...

First of all, you produce an updated manifest.json manifest using the gogcli storage download manifest gogcli update generate gogcli manifest update commands (option 1)... or you just use a gogcli manifest generate command (option 2).

After that, you run:

gogcli storage apply manifest --path=s3.json --storage=s3
gogcli storage execute-actions --path=s3.json --storage=s3

Or if you really don't want to redownload extras that don't have a checksum and trust that the file was not updated if the file name and size matches:

gogcli storage apply manifest --empty-checksum --path=s3.json --storage=s3
gogcli storage execute-actions --path=s3.json --storage=s3 

What just happened? Your storage's manifest got updated and the remaining actions got adjusted to include additional actions from the change in your manifest.

Ok, so ran storage validate and it returned some errors, maybe you deleted some files per accident or maybe, you generated a storage with a previous version of gogcli, then migrated your manifest and you'd like to make sure your storage is still ok.

Here, you might not be able to run a gogli manifest appy, because this commands only applies a differential between your local manifest and the manifest in the storage. It assumes that the storage's game files reflect the storage's manifest and do not check them separately.

Instead, to reconcile a situation where the game files diverge from what the manifest indicates, assuming your local file manifest.json contains a proper manifest (obtained either directly from your storage if you can manage it or otherwise from GOG.com running a gogli manifest generate command though in the later case, you'll have to redownload most of your extras as they don't have a checksum), you would run (assuming you have an s3 store):

gogcli storage repair --path=s3.json --storage=s3 

After running the command, you'll possibly have a bunch of pending actions in your storage if adjustments were needed.

You will execute those actions just like you would with an apply by running:

gogcli storage execute-actions --path=s3.json --storage=s3 

Sometimes, during a download, you might have to deal with repeated errors like this:

addFileAction(gameId=1207659025, fileInfo={Kind=extra, Name=darkstone_avatars.zip, ...}, ...) -> Download file size of 445 does not match expected file size of 184891
addFileAction(gameId=1207659025, fileInfo={Kind=extra, Name=darkstone_artworks.zip, ...}, ...) -> Download file size of 445 does not match expected file size of 6430403

If it occurs only once, it might be a bad download. If it occurs several times, it might mean that the game has changed since your manifest has been generated.

The best way to deal with the problem is to first get your manifest (using an s3 storage as an example here):

gogcli storage download manifest --storage=s3 --path=s3.json

Update that game entry in your manifest:

gogcli manifest update --id=1207659025

And finally, update the actions list in your storage with your updated manifest:

gogcli storage apply manifest --empty-checksum --path=s3.json --storage=s3

Sometimes, you want to find games matching certain criteria in your manifest. Gogcli has a search command to help you accomplish this.

You can output the result of your search either in a terminal or in a file.

For example, if you want to find games who title include the string master of orion and output them on the terminal, you would type:

gogcli manifest search --title="master of orion"

If you want to find games containing patch installer files and output them in the terminal, you would type:

gogcli manifest search --has-url="^/downloads/.*/[a-z]{2,2}[0-9]patch[0-9]$"

And if you find there is too much output on the terminal with your last command and would rather output into a file, you would type:

gogcli manifest search --has-url="^/downloads/.*/[a-z]{2,2}[0-9]patch[0-9]$" --terminal=false

If you want to adapt the above command to find games containing a French-only installer, you would type:

gogcli manifest search --has-url="^/downloads/.*/fr[0-9]installer[0-9]$" --terminal=false

Patches for some games can take a lot of disk space. Gogcli containes a convenience command to trim patches for a given game from your manifest and then you can apply it to your storage normally.

Lets assume I want to trim the patches for the game with id 1488706732. Assume I have an s3 store with storage specifications in a file called s3.json.

I would run the following command to get the manifest from storage:

gogcli storage download manifest -p s3.json -k s3

I would run the following command to trim the patches from the game in the manifest:

gogcli manifest trim-patches --id=1488706732

I would run the following command to look at a plan for the update (outputed in actions.json):

gogcli storage plan --empty-checksum --path=s3.json --storage=s3

And finally, assuming I am satisfied with the plan, I would run the following two commands to apply the update to the storage and delete the files:

gogcli storage apply manifest --empty-checksum --path=s3.json --storage=s3
gogcli storage execute-actions --concurrency=1 --path=s3.json --storage=s3

The following command will output a summary of your manifest:

gogcli manifest summary

It will tell you how many games are in your manifest, how many files, how many installer files, how many extra files, the aggregate size of all your game files, the average size of a game in your collection as well as the largest and smallest game in your collection.

With the eventual goal of creating more customizable and decoupled plugin storage solutions, I opted to add game slugs to the manifest file. These were added purely to add customisability to future storage plugins and should not impact existing functionality.

So, if you don't migrate a manifest generated by gogcli between version 0.10.x and 0.18.x, empty slug entries will be added to your manifest.

If you want those slug entries to be properly populated with the right values, you can either regenerate a new manifest or migrate your existing manifest with the command below:

gogcli storage manifest migrate

Note: The above assumes that your manifest is already at version 0.10.x or later. If that is not the case, read the instructions below.

The manifest had to be changed in version 0.10.0, because of an unforeseen situation with languages which forced me to change the manifest format.

To migrate your storage's manifest (using an s3 storage as an example here), copy the manifest to migrate in your current path. Then run:

gogcli storage manifest migrate

gogcli storage repair --path=s3.json --storage=s3

Note: You can upgrade a manifest generated by gogcli version 0.9.x with a gogcli binary between versions 0.10.x and 0.18.x only.

So if you want to upgrade your manifest generated in gogcli v0.9.x or earlier to version 0.19.x or later, you should:

• First download gogcli version 0.18.x and do a migration
• Then download gogcli version 0.19.x or later and do another migration