cohospider 0.0.1

A package to scrape Companies House data

Coho Spider

This is a scraper written by @haaroon and @rachchan that can be used to scrape data from Companies House.

Requirements

• Python >= 3.7
• Scrapy >= 2.8.0
• Companies House Developer Hub Account/REST API Key
• List of Company Numbers from Companies House to scrape (optional)

We have included a list of companies if you do not have any, but it may not be up to date.

You can get an API key from the Companies House website.

You can also contact Companies House directly, their support and developer teams are extremely friendly and can get you direct access to bulk read only data.

Installation Guide

First, open up a new terminal and install our scraper.

pip install cohospider

Next, open up your python terminal of choice, pick a spider to use and enter the following commands.

Scraping Persons With Significant Control

If you would like to obtain JSON data on a company's Persons With Significant Control, you can follow the following commands:

from spiders import CohoPscSpiderRun

With default Company data

psc_runner = CohoPscSpiderRun(key="INSERT_API_KEY_HERE")

OR with your own company data

psc_runner = CohoPscSpiderRun(key="INSERT_API_KEY_HERE", company_numbers=[COMPANY_NUMBER1, COMPANY_NUMBER2, etc..])

psc_runner.start()

The output will follow this JSON format: https://developer-specs.company-information.service.gov.uk/companies-house-public-data-api/resources/list?v=latest

Scraping Directors

If you would like to obtain JSON data on a company's Directors, you can follow the following commands:

from spiders import CohoOfficerSpiderRun

With default Company data

officer_runner = CohoOfficerSpiderRun(key="INSERT_API_KEY_HERE")

OR with your own company data

officer_runner = CohoOfficerSpiderRun(key="INSERT_API_KEY_HERE", company_numbers=[COMPANY_NUMBER1, COMPANY_NUMBER2, etc..])

officer_runner.start()

The output will follow this JSON format: https://developer-specs.company-information.service.gov.uk/companies-house-public-data-api/resources/officerlist?v=latest

Scraping for our example notebook

If you are following our example notebook/blog on Companies House in Raphtory, you will need to use our barbara-spider:

from spiders import BarbaraSpiderRun

barbara_runner = CohoOfficerSpiderRun(key="INSERT_API_KEY_HERE")

barbara_runner.start()

The output will follow this JSON format: https://developer-specs.company-information.service.gov.uk/companies-house-public-data-api/resources/officerlist?v=latest

All these runners produce a data folder in your root directory, where you can find all your JSON data, ready to be used in Raphtory for analysis.

License

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.