Created by Owen Sullivan, sulliops.co
airport-firmware-downloader.py fetches a list of available AirPort firmware update files according to model (Base Station, Express, Extreme, Time Capsule, etc.) and generation, then lists the available firmware based on the selected model and allows the user to specify which to download.
With version 1.1.0, the script also allows the user to download all available firmware updates for archiving. A user can download all firmware updates for all available models from the main menu, or all firmware updates for a specific model from that model's sub-menu.
The idea for this script was inspired by gibMacOS after I found myself in posession of a handful of AirPort Extreme routers that I'm considering reverse-engineering, if such a thing is possible. This blog post was a huge help in finding the AirPort firmware catalog.
In short, it damn well should be.
The script pulls the list of available firmware files from Apple's server directly by default, and will do so as long as Apple leaves the AirPort firmware catalog accessible to the public. The link to the catalog is: https://apsu.apple.com/version.xml
In the event that Apple removes access to this catalog, a backup of the catalog file taken on July 6th, 2023, is hosted within this script's repository as apsu_catalog.plist and the script will fall back to it. The link to the hosted catalog backup is: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sulliops/apple-airport-firmware-downloader/main/apsu_catalog.plist
Should the official catalog go offline, there is no guarantee that the links available in the hosted catalog backup will continue to resolve. The script will display an error in this case.
Lastly, I'm aware this code isn't the best ever written; I'm still new to this, and, realistically, I'm the only one who will ever use this. It also doesn't verify the server's SSL certificate, but I'm leaning against adding that because you never know what could happen to these old, unmaintained software catalogues and I don't want the script to become unusable. No data is being sent Apple's servers other than request headers, so it ought to be fine.
The script requires two dependencies, which can be installed using Python's pip package manager:
python3 -m pip install requests
python3 -m pip install tqdm
Then, run the script like so:
cd apple-airport-firmware-downloader/
python3 airport-firmware-downloader.py