Wayback Machine Domain Auditor

Note: This was vibe coded with Gemini

This script queries the Wayback Machine's CDX API to find archived snapshots of a specific domain within a user-defined date range. It filters for successful captures (HTTP 200) and exports the results to a CSV file for auditing and analysis.

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Features

• Custom Date Filtering: Specify a start date and an optional end date for the audit.
• Status Filtering: Automatically filters for successful 200 OK status codes.
• Deduplication: Uses the Wayback Machine's collapse parameter to ensure unique daily captures.
• CSV Export: Generates a structured report including:
• Formatted capture date (YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM)
• HTTP Status Code
• Original URL
• Direct link to the Wayback Machine archive

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Prerequisites

• Python 3.x
• requests library

To install the required library, run:

pip install requests

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Usage

1. Run the script:

python script_name.py

2. Enter the Domain: Input the domain you wish to audit (e.g., example.com).
3. Enter the Start Date: Provide the date in YYYYMMDD format (e.g., 20240101).
4. Enter the End Date: Provide the end date in YYYYMMDD format, or press Enter to default to the current date.

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How it Works

The script interacts with the Internet Archive's CDX API. Below is a high-level overview of the data flow:

1. Request: The script sends a GET request to web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx.
2. Parameters: It applies filters for the url, statuscode, and timestamp.
3. Processing: The script converts the raw API timestamp (e.g., 20240101123000) into a human-readable format.
4. Output: Data is written row-by-row into a CSV file named audit_[domain]_[start_date].csv.

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Data Structure

The generated CSV follows this format:

Date	Status	Original URL	View Archive Link
2024-01-01 12:00	200	http://example.com/	https://web.archive.org/web/20240101120000/http://example.com/

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