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.

Installation · Documentation · Releases

Features

• Highly Configurable: 13 options to fine-tune your scraper.
• Standalone: flyscrape comes as a single binary executable.
• Scriptable: Use JavaScript to write your data extraction logic.
• Simple API: Extract data from HTML pages with a familiar API.
• Fast Iteration: Use the development mode to get quick feedback.
• Request Caching: Re-run scripts on websites you already scraped.
• Zero Dependencies: No need to fill up your disk with npm packages.

Overview

• Example
• Installation
  • Pre-compiled binary
  • Compile from source
• Usage
• Configuration
• Query API
• Flyscrape API
  • Document Parsing
  • Basic HTTP Requests
  • File Downloads
• Issues and suggestions

Example

This example scrapes the first few pages form Hacker News, specifically the New, Show and Ask sections.

export const config = {
    urls: [
        "https://news.ycombinator.com/new",
        "https://news.ycombinator.com/show",
        "https://news.ycombinator.com/ask",
    ],
    depth: 5,
    cache: "file",
    follow: ["a.morelink[href]"],
}

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/new",
    "data": {
      "title": "New Links | Hacker News",
      "posts": [
        {
          "title": "Show HN: flyscrape - An standalone and scriptable web scraper",
          "url": "https://flyscrape.com/"
        },
        ...
      ]
    }
  }
]

Check out the examples folder for more detailed examples.

Installation

Pre-compiled binary

flyscrape is available for MacOS, Linux and Windows 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://go.dev/.

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

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

Usage

Usage:

    flyscrape run SCRIPT [config flags]

Examples:

    # Run the script.
    $ flyscrape run example.js

    # Set the URL as argument.
    $ flyscrape run example.js --url "http://other.com"

    # Enable proxy support.
    $ flyscrape run example.js --proxy "http://someproxy:8043"

    # Follow paginated links.
    $ flyscrape run example.js --depth 5 --follow ".next-button > a"

Configuration

Below is an example scraping script that showcases the capabilities of flyscrape. For a full documentation of all configuration options, visit the documentation page.

export const config = {
    // Specify the URL to start scraping from.
    url: "https://example.com/",

    // Specify the multiple URLs to start scraping from.   (default = [])
    urls: [                          
        "https://anothersite.com/",
        "https://yetanother.com/",
    ],

    // Specify how deep links should be followed.          (default = 0, no follow)
    depth: 5,                        

    // Speficy the css selectors to follow.                (default = ["a[href]"])
    follow: [".next > a", ".related a"],                      
 
    // Specify the allowed domains. ['*'] for all.         (default = domain from url)
    allowedDomains: ["example.com", "anothersite.com"],              
 
    // Specify the blocked domains.                        (default = none)
    blockedDomains: ["somesite.com"],              

    // Specify the allowed URLs as regex.                  (default = all allowed)
    allowedURLs: ["/posts", "/articles/\d+"],                 
 
    // Specify the blocked URLs as regex.                  (default = none)
    blockedURLs: ["/admin"],                 
   
    // Specify the rate in requests per minute.            (default = no rate limit)
    rate: 60,                       

    // Specify the number of concurrent requests.          (default = no limit)
    concurrency: 1,                       

    // Specify a single HTTP(S) proxy URL.                 (default = no proxy)
    proxy: "http://someproxy.com:8043",

    // Specify multiple HTTP(S) proxy URLs.                (default = no proxy)
    proxies: [
      "http://someproxy.com:8043",
      "http://someotherproxy.com:8043",
    ],                     

    // Enable file-based request caching.                  (default = no cache)
    cache: "file",                   

    // Specify the HTTP request header.                    (default = none)
    headers: {                       
        "Authorization": "Bearer ...",
        "User-Agent": "Mozilla ...",
    },
};

export function setup() {
    // Optional setup function, called once before scraping starts.
    // Can be used for authentication.
}

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>]

Flyscrape API

Document Parsing

import { parse } from "flyscrape";

const doc = parse(`<div class="foo">bar</div>`);
const text = doc.find(".foo").text();

Basic HTTP Requests

import http from "flyscrape/http";

const response = http.get("https://example.com")

const response = http.postForm("https://example.com", {
    "username": "foo",
    "password": "bar",
})

const response = http.postJSON("https://example.com", {
    "username": "foo",
    "password": "bar",
})

// Contents of response
{
    body: "<html>...</html>",
    status: 200,
    headers: {
        "Content-Type": "text/html",
        // ...
    },
    error": "",
}

File Downloads

import { download } from "flyscrape/http";

download("http://example.com/image.jpg")              // downloads as "image.jpg"
download("http://example.com/image.jpg", "other.jpg") // downloads as "other.jpg"
download("http://example.com/image.jpg", "dir/")      // downloads as "dir/image.jpg"

// If the server offers a filename via the Content-Disposition header and no
// destination filename is provided, Flyscrape will honor the suggested filename.
// E.g. `Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="archive.zip"`
download("http://example.com/generate_archive.php", "dir/") // downloads as "dir/archive.zip"

Issues and Suggestions

If you encounter any issues or have suggestions for improvement, please submit an issue.