Create an item

Every item on the Internet Archive corresponds to a thing such as a book, a movie, or a song. Each item can contain one or more file. For example, a book called Euclid's geometry can be an item that contains files such as euclid_geometry_part1.txt, euclid_geometry_part2.txt, and euclid_geometry_part1.pdf. Optionally, an item can belong to a collection.

This tutorial shows you how to upload an item to the Internet Archive.

Prerequisites

The instructions in this tutorial assume that you’re using Python 3.

• IA-S3 keys. If you don’t have them, see Get your Internet Archive credentials.

• The internet archive package in your environment. If it isn’t, install it by running the following command: pip install internetarchive.

Steps

Use the get_item object of the internetarchive module to upload an item.

Use the following code snippet as guidance.

from internetarchive import get_item

md = {'collection': 'test_collection', 'title': 'My New Item', 'mediatype': 'movies'}
r = item.upload('<identifier>', files=['film.txt', 'film.mov'], metadata=md, access_key='YoUrAcCEssKey', secret_key='youRSECRETKEY')

r[0].status_code

If the upload was successful, you see a status code of 200.