a command-line web scraping tool
Project description
a command-line web scraping tool
scrape is a rule-based web crawler and information extraction tool capable of manipulating and merging new and existing documents. XML Path Language (XPath) and regular expressions are used to define rules for filtering content and web traversal. Output may be converted into text, csv, pdf, and/or HTML formats.
Installation
pip install scrape
or
pip install git+https://github.com/huntrar/scrape.git#egg=scrape
or
git clone https://github.com/huntrar/scrape cd scrape python setup.py install
You must install wkhtmltopdf to save files to pdf.
Usage
usage: scrape.py [-h] [-a [ATTRIBUTES [ATTRIBUTES ...]]] [-all] [-c [CRAWL [CRAWL ...]]] [-C] [--csv] [-cs [CACHE_SIZE]] [-f [FILTER [FILTER ...]]] [--html] [-i] [-m] [-max MAX_CRAWLS] [-n] [-ni] [-no] [-o [OUT [OUT ...]]] [-ow] [-p] [-pt] [-q] [-s] [-t] [-v] [-x [XPATH]] [QUERY [QUERY ...]] a command-line web scraping tool positional arguments: QUERY URLs/files to scrape optional arguments: -h, --help show this help message and exit -a [ATTRIBUTES [ATTRIBUTES ...]], --attributes [ATTRIBUTES [ATTRIBUTES ...]] extract text using tag attributes -all, --crawl-all crawl all pages -c [CRAWL [CRAWL ...]], --crawl [CRAWL [CRAWL ...]] regexp rules for following new pages -C, --clear-cache clear requests cache --csv write files as csv -cs [CACHE_SIZE], --cache-size [CACHE_SIZE] size of page cache (default: 1000) -f [FILTER [FILTER ...]], --filter [FILTER [FILTER ...]] regexp rules for filtering text --html write files as HTML -i, --images save page images -m, --multiple save to multiple files -max MAX_CRAWLS, --max-crawls MAX_CRAWLS max number of pages to crawl -n, --nonstrict allow crawler to visit any domain -ni, --no-images do not save page images -no, --no-overwrite do not overwrite files if they exist -o [OUT [OUT ...]], --out [OUT [OUT ...]] specify outfile names -ow, --overwrite overwrite a file if it exists -p, --pdf write files as pdf -pt, --print print text output -q, --quiet suppress program output -s, --single save to a single file -t, --text write files as text -v, --version display current version -x [XPATH], --xpath [XPATH] filter HTML using XPath
Notes
Input to scrape can be links, files, or a combination of the two, allowing you to create new files constructed from both existing and newly scraped content.
Multiple input files/URLs are saved to multiple output files/directories by default. To consolidate them, use the –single flag.
Images are automatically included when saving as pdf or HTML; this involves making additional HTTP requests, adding a significant amount of processing time. If you wish to forgo this feature use the –no-images flag, or set the environment variable SCRAPE_DISABLE_IMGS.
Requests cache is enabled by default to cache webpages, it can be disabled by setting the environment variable SCRAPE_DISABLE_CACHE.
Pages are saved temporarily as PART.html files during processing. Unless saving pages as HTML, these files are removed automatically upon conversion or exit.
To crawl pages with no restrictions use the –crawl-all flag, or filter which pages to crawl by URL keywords by passing one or more regexps to –crawl.
If you want the crawler to follow links outside of the given URLs domain, use –nonstrict.
Crawling can be stopped by Ctrl-C or alternatively by setting the number of pages or links to be crawled using –maxpages and –maxlinks. A page may contain zero or many links to more pages.
The text output of scraped files can be printed to stdout rather than saved by entering –print.
Filtering HTML can be done using –xpath, while filtering text is done by entering one or more regexps to –filter.
If you only want to specify specific tag attributes to extract rather than an entire XPath, use –attributes. The default choice is to extract only text attributes, but you can specify one or many different attributes (such as href, src, title, or any attribute available..).
Project details
Release history Release notifications | RSS feed
Download files
Download the file for your platform. If you're not sure which to choose, learn more about installing packages.