If you have an O’Reilly Media Account, you may have noticed that - unfortunately - the platform doesn’t provide an easy way to download EPUB files for offline reading on your e-reader. While O’Reilly offers a web-based reader and mobile apps, sometimes you just want to read your books offline or on a dedicated e-reader, like a Kindle or Kobo.

This project on GitHub provides a simple Python script on a Docker container that allows you to download your O’Reilly Media EPUB books with a single sign-on (SSO) login. This way, you can easily transfer your books to your e-reader or mobile device for offline reading.

How to Use the O’Reilly Media EPUB Downloader with SSO⌗

If your account makes use of a Single Sign-On (SSO) provider, you can still use this script by providing your SSO login credentials. The script will handle the authentication process and download the EPUB files for you.

  1. Login as usual to https://learning.oreilly.com/
  2. Open the developer tools with F12
  3. Enter the command in the console:
copy(JSON.stringify(document.cookie.split(';').map(c => c.split('=')).map(i => [i[0].trim(), i[1].trim()]).reduce((r, i) => {r[i[0]] = i[1]; return r;}, {})))
  1. Paste the copied content into a file, /path/to/cookies.json
  2. Run the following command to download the EPUB files:
(cat /path/to/cookies.json | docker run -i kirinnee/orly:latest sso <book id>) > "/path/to/book.epub"

where <book id> is the ID of the book you want to download. You can find this ID in the URL of the book’s page on the O’Reilly platform.

I use this script to download my O’Reilly books for offline reading on a local folder synced with my Nextcloud instance.

Finally, using nextcloud-kobo, I sync the same folder into my Kobo e-reader. It’s a great and straightforward way to enjoy your technical books on your favorite e-reader without being tied to a web browser or mobile app on a tablet or smartphone.