The scripts in this directory together form the osmtools suite.

Originally written by Frederik Ramm [email protected], public domain.

The scripts require Perl and the LWP module (libwww-perl on Ubuntu et al., Strawberry Perl on Windows).

Package Contents

Script	Module	Description
batch_redaction.pl	BatchRedaction.pm	applies redactions to a list of elements
block.pl	Block.pm	creates user blocks
changeset.pl	Changeset.pm	opens and closes changesets
changeset_graph.pl	ChangesetGraph.pm	draws changeset dependency graph
complex_revert.pl		reverts a group of interdependent changesets
delete.pl	Delete.pm	deletes or redacts an object
element.pl	Element.pm	creates/modifies/deletes an object
modify.pl	Modify.pm	modifies tags of an object
note.pl	Note.pm	hides notes
osm_api.pl	OsmApi.pm	makes arbitrary OSM API requests with auth headers
quickdelnodes.pl		deletes many nodes quickly
redaction.pl	Redaction.pm	creates and applies redactions
revert.pl	Revert.pm	reverts a whole changeset
trace.pl	Trace.pm	uploads gpx traces
tokens.pl		requests oauth2 login tokens
undelete.pl	Undelete.pm	undeletes an object; see comment in-file for differences to undo
undo.pl	Undo.pm	undoes one change to one object
user_changesets.pl	UserChangesets.pm	bulk downloads changesets by given user; there are also simpler shell script versions listed below
download_changesets.sh		bulk downloads changesets by given user name
download_changesets_uid.sh		bulk downloads changesets by given user id

Design "Philosophy"

Most functionality is implemented as individual Perl modules (.pm). They do not have a namespace because we want people to be able to run everything from the current directory. If you create a Perl module named Osm::Api, then it has to reside in a subdirectory named Osm which tends to get confusing, at least for me.

We're not using any libraries for XML reading and writing in most of the scripts, just plain regular expressions.

We're not creating any OO interfaces.

In addition to the modules, there are simple perl scripts (.pl) that can be called from the command line and that provide a command line interface to what the modules do.

If you want to create some hyper cool object oriented undo/redo manager using all the latest libraries and technologies and design patterns, feel free to cannibalize the hell out of this code and make your own.

Act Responsibly

These scripts enable you to revert edits done by other people. Never do this unless you are absolutely sure that the edit in question is either malicious or accidental. Make an effort to talk to the user beforehand and afterwards. Always be kind to other mappers, and always assume that if they did something wrong it must have been an error, a misunderstanding, or their cat chasing fluff across the keyboard!

When in doubt, discuss things on the mailing list before you act (see lists.openstreetmap.org). Also, read the Wiki article on automated edits here.

These scripts do not have safety nets. Be sure that you feel confident to fix anything you might break. If you do not know your PUTs from your GETs, if you do not know the details of API 0.6, or know what changesets are and how they work, then DO NOT USE THIS SOFTWARE.

Installation

Clone the repository or copy its contents:

git clone https://github.com/woodpeck/osm-revert-scripts

Linux

You may need to install extra perl modules. On Ubuntu 22.04 they are:

• Bytes::Random::Secure if you're going to request OAuth2 tokens, which you probably will

  sudo apt install libbytes-random-secure-perl
  

• Term::ReadKey if you're going to type in login/password, which you probably won't

  sudo apt install libterm-readkey-perl
  

Windows

Strawberry Perl comes with all required modules included.

When using the download_changesets.sh script on Windows with cygwin, it may be necessary to convert the file using the dos2unix command. See this StackExchange answer for more information.

Configuration

You will have to create a file named .osmtoolsrc in your home directory containing the URL of the OSM server to use. The first thing to specify is the server to work with. The server URL must be complete up to the API version number and the slash afterwards, so:

apiurl=https://api06.dev.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/

The next step is to add the oauth2 client id of osmtools. This step is not required for servers where osmtools is already registered with a built-in id, which are:

• main OSM server
• sandbox OSM server
• OpenHistoricalMap

If your server is not in the list above and you don't have a client id for osmtools on that server, you'll have to register osmtools as an oauth2 app. This process is described in the next section. Once you have the id, you'll need to add it to .osmtoolsrc:

oauth2_client_id=1234567890zxcvbasdfgqwert

The next step is usually to request authorization tokens. This request will happen automatically if any operation requiring user login is run. However, since it requires user input, it may fail with scripts reading from stdin. Therefore it's safer to request tokens before running any other scripts by executing:

tokens.pl request

You will be prompted to open a link to a confirmation page, then to copy the code. The received tokens will be saved to .osmtoolsrc.

On older versions of openstreetmap-website you may encounter an error message "The requested scope is invalid, unknown, or malformed." This is because they don't have the write_redactions permission separated from write_api. In this case you have to exclude this permission from your token request by running:

tokens.pl request --no-scope=write_redactions

Alternatively, if you want to avoid using oauth2, registering an application, setting up ids and tokens, you may use basic authorization. In this case you have to provide your username and password. Some operation require username and password anyway, see the "SCRAPE" section below.

username=fred
password=test

If your username or password is not specified in your .osmtoolsrc file, these scripts will look for OSMTOOLS_USERNAME and OSMTOOLS_PASSWORD environment variables. As a last resort, you will be prompted for a user name or password on the command line (requires the Term::ReadKey module).

By default, all tools will run in "dry run" mode, so no changes will be actually written and all write requests will be considered successful. Add the dryrun=0 parameter to the file for live action.

By default, "dry run" also enables "debug" so you are shown the requests made. If you want to keep debug mode when setting dryrun=0, explicitly set debug=1. There's also debug_request_headers and debug_request_body to print out details about the HTML messages, and the same for responses.

Register osmtools as a oauth2 app

1. Go to the oauth2/applications/new page of your openstreetmap-website server (Example).
2. For Name enter osmtools or anything else to identify the application. This name will be shown to users when they grant permissions to osmtools.
3. For Redirect URIs enter:

   urn:ietf:wg:oauth:2.0:oob
   

4. Uncheck Confidential application
5. In Permissions check:
   • Read user preferences
   • Modify the map
   • Read private GPS traces
   • Upload GPS traces
   • Modify notes
   • Redact map data - this permission may be missing on older openstreetmap-website deployments that have it combined with Modify the map
6. Click Register or Create Oauth2 application below the registration form.
7. Add oauth2_client_id=... with the application Client ID to your .osmtoolsrc file.

You don't need to register osmtools on api06.dev.openstreetmap.org, api.openstreetmap.org and www.openhistoricalmap.org servers. The scripts have app ids built in for these servers. You can set oauth2_client_id to an empty value to refuse to use oauth2 on these servers and go back to basic login/password authorization.

SCRAPE SCRAPE SCRAPE

Not everything these scripts do is actually exposed in proper API calls; for the creation of redactions and blocks, the scripts have to resort to actually "playing browser" and going through OSM's login page, set up a session, and then submit the right forms. Needless to say, these hacks are more likely to break than proper API access.