quickscrape is a simple command-line tool for scraping websites. It is unique in that:
- it is headless: URLs are rendered in a GUI-less browser, meaning the version of the HTML you scrape is the same one visitors would see on their screen
- it is declarative: Scrapers are defined in separate JSON files. This mean no programming required! It also means any other software supporting the same format could use the same scraper definitions.
quickscrape is being developed to allow the community early access to the technology that will drive ContentMine.
NOTE: This is pre-alpha software. It works for some very specific test-cases and is under active development. Please wait until we're in beta to report issues.
quickscrape itself is very easy to install. Simply:
sudo npm install --global quickscrapeHowever, quickscrape depends on several other packages:
- Node.js enables standalone JavaScript apps.
- PhantomJS is a headless browser system that renders websites.
- CasperJS is a wrapper around PhantomJS that allows us to do powerful things with it.
If you don't already have these installed, you'll need to follow the instructions for your operating system below. Currently we only support OSX and Debian/Ubuntu Linux. If you need instructions for another operating system please create an issue.
The easiest way to install the dependencies is using a package manager like Homebrew. Currently only Homebrew is supported.
brew update
# get Node.js and PhantomJS
brew install node phantomjs
# we need the latest development version of CasperJS so we use the --devel flag
brew install casperjs --develThen you can install quickscrape:
sudo npm install --global --unsafe-perms quickscrapeThe dependencies can be somewhat tricky to install manually on Debian/Ubuntu, so we've made an install script that you can run easily:
curl -sSL http://git.io/DAuTPQ | sudo bash
If you'd like to run the steps yourself, see this gist.
NOTE: Some people have found that gist failed half-way through and installed Node.js using app-get, including dependent packages .
Run quickscrape --help from the command line to get help:
Usage: quickscrape [options]
Options:
-h, --help output usage information
-V, --version output the version number
-u, --url <url> URL to scrape
-r, --urllist <path> path to file with list of URLs to scrape (one per line)
-s, --scraper <path> path to scraper definition (in JSON format)
-o, --output <path> where to output results (directory will be created if it doesn't exist
-r, --ratelimit <int> maximum number of scrapes per minute (default 3)
-l, --loglevel <level> amount of information to log (silent, verbose, info*, data, warn, error, or debug)
--checkdeps check if dependencies are installed and then exit
You must provide scraper definitions in ScraperJSON format as used in the ContentMine journal-scrapers.
First, you'll want to grab some pre-cooked definitions:
git clone https://github.com/ContentMine/journal-scrapers.gitNow just run quickscrape:
quickscrape \
--url https://peerj.com/articles/384 \
--scraper journal-scrapers/peerj.json \
--output peerj-384You'll see log messages informing you how the scraping proceeds:
Then in the peerj-384 directory there are several files:
$ ls peerj-384
384 384.pdf rendered.html results.json
384is the fulltext HTML (as in the case of PeerJ, there's no file extension)384.pdfis the fulltext PDFrendered.htmlis the fulltext HTML after rendering in the local browserresults.jsonis a JSON file containing all the captured data
results.json looks like this:
[
{
"fulltext_pdf": "https://peerj.com/articles/384.pdf"
},
{
"fulltext_html": "https://peerj.com/articles/384"
},
{
"title": "Mutation analysis of the SLC26A4, FOXI1 and KCNJ10 genes in individuals with congenital hearing loss"
},
{
"author": "Lynn M. Pique"
},
{
"author": "Marie-Luise Brennan"
},
{
"author": "Colin J. Davidson"
},
{
"author": "Frederick Schaefer"
},
{
"author": "John Greinwald Jr"
},
{
"author": "Iris Schrijver"
},
{
"date": "2014-05-08"
},
{
"doi": "10.7717/peerj.384"
},
{
"volume": "2"
},
{
"firstpage": "e384"
},
{
"description": "Pendred syndrome (PDS) and DFNB4 comprise a phenotypic spectrum of sensorineural hearing loss disorders that typically result from biallelic mutations of the SLC26A4 gene. Although PDS and DFNB4 are recessively inherited, sequencing of the coding regions and splice sites of SLC26A4 in individuals suspected to be affected with these conditions often fails to identify two mutations. We investigated the potential contribution of large SLC26A4 deletions and duplications to sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) by screening 107 probands with one known SLC26A4 mutation by Multiplex Ligation-dependent Probe Amplification (MLPA). A heterozygous deletion, spanning exons 4–6, was detected in only one individual, accounting for approximately 1% of the missing mutations in our cohort. This low frequency is consistent with previously published MLPA results. We also examined the potential involvement of digenic inheritance in PDS/DFNB4 by sequencing the coding regions of FOXI1 and KCNJ10. Of the 29 probands who were sequenced, three carried nonsynonymous variants including one novel sequence change in FOXI1 and two polymorphisms in KCNJ10. We performed a review of prior studies and, in conjunction with our current data, conclude that the frequency of FOXI1 (1.4%) and KCNJ10 (3.6%) variants in PDS/DFNB4 individuals is low. Our results, in combination with previously published reports, indicate that large SLC26A4 deletions and duplications as well as mutations of FOXI1 and KCNJ10 play limited roles in the pathogenesis of SNHL and suggest that other genetic factors likely contribute to the phenotype."
}
]You can tell quickscrape to process a list of URLs using the same scraper.
You'll need a list of URLs. For example I've grabbed the URLs of the 5 most recently published articles in Molecules published by MDPI (here's a script to get them yourself).
Create a file urls.txt:
http://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/19/2/2042/htm
http://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/19/2/2049/htm
http://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/19/2/2061/htm
http://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/19/2/2077/htm
http://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/19/2/2089/htm
Say we want to extract basic metadata, PDFs, and all figures with captions. We can make a simple ScraperJSON scraper to do that, and save it as molecules_figures.json:
{
"url": "mdpi",
"elements": {
"dc.source": {
"selector": "//meta[@name='dc.source']",
"attribute": "content"
},
"figure_img": {
"selector": "//div[contains(@id, 'fig')]/div/img",
"attribute": "src",
"download": true
},
"figure_caption": {
"selector": "//div[contains(@class, 'html-fig_description')]"
},
"fulltext_pdf": {
"selector": "//meta[@name='citation_pdf_url']",
"attribute": "content",
"download": true
},
"fulltext_html": {
"selector": "//meta[@name='citation_fulltext_html_url']",
"attribute": "content",
"download": true
},
"title": {
"selector": "//meta[@name='citation_title']",
"attribute": "content"
},
"author": {
"selector": "//meta[@name='citation_author']",
"attribute": "content"
},
"date": {
"selector": "//meta[@name='citation_date']",
"attribute": "content"
},
"doi": {
"selector": "//meta[@name='citation_doi']",
"attribute": "content"
},
"volume": {
"selector": "//meta[@name='citation_volume']",
"attribute": "content"
},
"issue": {
"selector": "//meta[@name='citation_issue']",
"attribute": "content"
},
"firstpage": {
"selector": "//meta[@name='citation_firstpage']",
"attribute": "content"
},
"description": {
"selector": "//meta[@name='description']",
"attribute": "content"
}
}
}Now run quickscrape with the --urllist option:
quickscrape \
--urllist urls.txt \
--scraper molecules_figures.jsonYou'll see output like:
Notice that quickscrape rate-limits itself to 3 scrapes per minute. This is a basic courtesy to the sites you are scraping - you wouldn't block the door of a library, so don't take up more than a reasonable share of a site's bandwidth.
Your results are organised into subdirectories, one per URL:
$ tree output
output/
├── http_www.mdpi.com_1420-3049_19_2_2042_htm
│ ├── htm
│ ├── molecules-19-02042-g001-1024.png
│ ├── molecules-19-02042-g002-1024.png
│ ├── pdf
│ ├── rendered.html
│ └── results.json
├── http_www.mdpi.com_1420-3049_19_2_2049_htm
│ ├── htm
│ ├── molecules-19-02049-g001-1024.png
│ ├── molecules-19-02049-g002-1024.png
│ ├── molecules-19-02049-g003-1024.png
│ ├── molecules-19-02049-g004-1024.png
│ ├── molecules-19-02049-g005-1024.png
│ ├── pdf
│ ├── rendered.html
│ └── results.json
├── http_www.mdpi.com_1420-3049_19_2_2061_htm
│ ├── htm
│ ├── molecules-19-02061-g001-1024.png
│ ├── molecules-19-02061-g002-1024.png
│ ├── molecules-19-02061-g003-1024.png
│ ├── molecules-19-02061-g004-1024.png
│ ├── pdf
│ ├── rendered.html
│ └── results.json
├── http_www.mdpi.com_1420-3049_19_2_2077_htm
│ ├── htm
│ ├── molecules-19-02077-g001-1024.png
│ ├── molecules-19-02077-g002-1024.png
│ ├── molecules-19-02077-g003-1024.png
│ ├── molecules-19-02077-g004-1024.png
│ ├── molecules-19-02077-g005-1024.png
│ ├── molecules-19-02077-g006-1024.png
│ ├── molecules-19-02077-g007-1024.png
│ ├── pdf
│ ├── rendered.html
│ └── results.json
└── http_www.mdpi.com_1420-3049_19_2_2089_htm
├── htm
├── molecules-19-02089-g001-1024.png
├── molecules-19-02089-g002-1024.png
├── pdf
├── rendered.html
└── results.json
5 directories, 40 filesWe are not yet accepting contributions, if you'd like to help please drop me an email (richard@contentmine.org) and I'll let you know when we're ready for that.
- 0.1.0 - initial version with simple one-element scraping
- 0.1.1 - multiple-member elements; clean exiting; massive speedup
- 0.1.2 - ability to grab text or HTML content of a selected node via special attributes
textandhtml - 0.1.3 - refactor into modules, full logging suite, much more robust downloading
- 0.1.4 - multiple URL processing, bug fixes, reduce dependency list
- 0.1.5 - fix bug in bubbling logs up from PhantomJS
- 0.1.6 - add dependency checking option
- 0.1.7 - fix bug where jsdom rendered external resources (#10)
Copyright (c) 2014 Richard Smith-Unna
Licensed under the MIT license.