flyscrape

flyscrape is a standalone and scriptable web scraper, combining the speed of Go with the flexibility of JavaScript. — Focus on data extraction rather than request juggling.

Features

• Domains and URL filtering
• Depth control
• Request caching
• Rate limiting
• Development mode
• Single binary executable

Example script

export const config = {
    url: "https://news.ycombinator.com/",
}

export default function ({ doc, absoluteURL }) {
    const title = doc.find("title");
    const posts = doc.find(".athing");

    return {
        title: title.text(),
        posts: posts.map((post) => {
            const link = post.find(".titleline > a");

            return {
                title: link.text(),
                url: link.attr("href"),
            };
        }),
    }
}

$ flyscrape run hackernews.js
[
  {
    "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/",
    "data": {
      "title": "Hacker News",
      "posts": [
        {
          "title": "Show HN: flyscrape - An expressive and elegant web scraper",
          "url": "https://flyscrape.com"
        },
        ...
      ]
    }
  }
]

Installation

Pre-compiled binary

flyscrape is available via for MacOS, Linux and Window as a downloadable binary from the releases page.

Compile from source

To compile flyscrape from source, follow these steps:

1. Install Go: Make sure you have Go installed on your system. If not, you can download it from https://golang.org/.

2. Install flyscrape: Open a terminal and run the following command:

   go install github.com/philippta/flyscrape/cmd/flyscrape@latest
   

Usage

flyscrape is a standalone and scriptable web scraper for efficiently extracting data from websites.

Usage:

    flyscrape <command> [arguments]

Commands:

    new    creates a sample scraping script
    run    runs a scraping script
    dev    watches and re-runs a scraping script

Create a new sample scraping script

The new command allows you to create a new boilerplate sample script which helps you getting started.

flyscrape new example.js

Watch the script for changes during development

The dev command allows you to watch your scraping script for changes and quickly iterate during development. In development mode, flyscrape will not follow any links and request caching is enabled.

flyscrape dev example.js

Run the scraping script

The run command allows you to run your script.

flyscrape run example.js

Configuration

Below is an example scraping script that showcases the capabilities of flyscrape:

export const config = {
    url: "https://example.com/", // Specify the URL to start scraping from.
    depth: 0,                    // Specify how deep links should be followed.  (default = 0, no follow)
    allowedDomains: [],          // Specify the allowed domains. ['*'] for all. (default = domain from url)
    blockedDomains: [],          // Specify the blocked domains.                (default = none)
    allowedURLs: [],             // Specify the allowed URLs as regex.          (default = all allowed)
    blockedURLs: [],             // Specify the blocked URLs as regex.          (default = none)
    rate: 100,                   // Specify the rate in requests per second.    (default = no rate limit)
    cache: "file",               // Enable file-based request caching.          (default = no cache)
};

export default function ({ doc, url, absoluteURL }) {
    // doc              - Contains the parsed HTML document
    // url              - Contains the scraped URL
    // absoluteURL(...) - Transforms relative URLs into absolute URLs
}

Query API

// <div class="element" foo="bar">Hey</div>
const el = doc.find(".element")
el.text()                                 // "Hey"
el.html()                                 // `<div class="element">Hey</div>`
el.attr("foo")                            // "bar"
el.hasAttr("foo")                         // true
el.hasClass("element")                    // true

// <ul>
//   <li class="a">Item 1</li>
//   <li>Item 2</li>
//   <li>Item 3</li>
// </ul>
const list = doc.find("ul")
list.children()                           // [<li class="a">Item 1</li>, <li>Item 2</li>, <li>Item 3</li>]

const items = list.find("li")
items.length()                            // 3
items.first()                             // <li>Item 1</li>
items.last()                              // <li>Item 3</li>
items.get(1)                              // <li>Item 2</li>
items.get(1).prev()                       // <li>Item 1</li>
items.get(1).next()                       // <li>Item 3</li>
items.get(1).parent()                     // <ul>...</ul>
items.get(1).siblings()                   // [<li class="a">Item 1</li>, <li>Item 2</li>, <li>Item 3</li>]
items.map(item => item.text())            // ["Item 1", "Item 2", "Item 3"]
items.filter(item => item.hasClass("a"))  // [<li class="a">Item 1</li>]

Contributing

We welcome contributions from the community! If you encounter any issues or have suggestions for improvement, please submit an issue.