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@hmb-research/x-ray
Advanced tools
var Xray = require('@hmb-research/x-ray')
var x = Xray()
x('https://blog.ycombinator.com/', '.post', [
{
title: 'h1 a',
link: '.article-title@href'
}
])
.paginate('.nav-previous a@href')
.limit(3)
.write('results.json')
Installation
npm install @hmb-research/x-ray
Features
-
Flexible schema: Supports strings, arrays, arrays of objects, and nested object structures. The schema is not tied to the structure of the page you're scraping, allowing you to pull the data in the structure of your choosing.
-
Composable: The API is entirely composable, giving you great flexibility in how you scrape each page.
-
Pagination support: Paginate through websites, scraping each page. X-ray also supports a request
delayand a paginationlimit. Scraped pages can be streamed to a file, so if there's an error on one page, you won't lose what you've already scraped. -
Crawler support: Start on one page and move to the next easily. The flow is predictable, following a breadth-first crawl through each of the pages.
-
Responsible: X-ray has support for concurrency, throttles, delays, timeouts and limits to help you scrape any page responsibly.
-
Pluggable drivers: Swap in different scrapers depending on your needs. Currently supports HTTP and PhantomJS driver drivers. In the future, I'd like to see a Tor driver for requesting pages through the Tor network.
Selector API
xray(url, selector)(fn)
Scrape the url for the following selector, returning an object in the callback fn.
The selector takes an enhanced jQuery-like string that is also able to select on attributes. The syntax for selecting on attributes is selector@attribute. If you do not supply an attribute, the default is selecting the innerText.
Here are a few examples:
- Scrape a single tag
xray('http://google.com', 'title')(function(err, title) {
console.log(title) // Google
})
- Scrape a single class
xray('http://reddit.com', '.content')(fn)
- Scrape an attribute
xray('http://techcrunch.com', 'img.logo@src')(fn)
- Scrape
innerHTML
xray('http://news.ycombinator.com', 'body@html')(fn)
xray(url, scope, selector)
You can also supply a scope to each selector. In jQuery, this would look something like this: $(scope).find(selector).
xray(html, scope, selector)
Instead of a url, you can also supply raw HTML and all the same semantics apply.
var html = '<body><h2>Pear</h2></body>'
x(html, 'body', 'h2')(function(err, header) {
header // => Pear
})
API
xray.driver(driver)
Specify a driver to make requests through. Available drivers include:
- request - A simple driver built around request. Use this to set headers, cookies or http methods.
- phantom - A high-level browser automation library. Use this to render pages or when elements need to be interacted with, or when elements are created dynamically using javascript (e.g.: Ajax-calls).
xray.stream()
Returns Readable Stream of the data. This makes it easy to build APIs around x-ray. Here's an example with Express:
var app = require('express')()
var x = require('x-ray')()
app.get('/', function(req, res) {
var stream = x('http://google.com', 'title').stream()
stream.pipe(res)
})
xray.write([path])
Stream the results to a path.
If no path is provided, then the behavior is the same as .stream().
xray.then(cb)
Constructs a Promise object and invoke its then function with a callback cb. Be sure to invoke then() at the last step of xray method chaining, since the other methods are not promisified.
x('https://dribbble.com', 'li.group', [
{
title: '.dribbble-img strong',
image: '.dribbble-img [data-src]@data-src'
}
])
.paginate('.next_page@href')
.limit(3)
.then(function(res) {
console.log(res[0]) // prints first result
})
.catch(function(err) {
console.log(err) // handle error in promise
})
xray.paginate(selector)
Select a url from a selector and visit that page.
xray.limit(n)
Limit the amount of pagination to n requests.
xray.abort(validator)
Abort pagination if validator function returns true.
The validator function receives two arguments:
result: The scrape result object for the current page.nextUrl: The URL of the next page to scrape.
xray.delay(from, [to])
Delay the next request between from and to milliseconds.
If only from is specified, delay exactly from milliseconds.
var x = Xray().delay('1s', '10s')
xray.concurrency(n)
Set the request concurrency to n. Defaults to Infinity.
var x = Xray().concurrency(2)
xray.throttle(n, ms)
Throttle the requests to n requests per ms milliseconds.
var x = Xray().throttle(2, '1s')
xray.timeout (ms)
Specify a timeout of ms milliseconds for each request.
var x = Xray().timeout(30)
Collections
X-ray also has support for selecting collections of tags. While x('ul', 'li') will only select the first list item in an unordered list, x('ul', ['li']) will select all of them.
Additionally, X-ray supports "collections of collections" allowing you to smartly select all list items in all lists with a command like this: x(['ul'], ['li']).
Selector Types
X-ray supports multiple selector types to handle different data extraction needs. Each type provides unique capabilities for structuring and extracting data.
String Selectors
The most common selector type. Uses CSS-like syntax with support for attribute extraction using @.
x('http://example.com', {
title: 'h1', // Extract text content
link: 'a@href', // Extract href attribute
html: '.content@html', // Extract innerHTML
image: 'img.logo@src' // Extract src attribute
})
Function Selectors
Use functions for advanced extraction logic or to compose nested x-ray instances.
x('http://example.com', {
// Custom extraction logic
custom: function($, callback) {
const value = $('.selector').text().toUpperCase()
callback(null, value)
},
// Nested x-ray instance (crawling)
details: x('.link@href', {
title: 'h1',
description: 'p'
})
})
Array Selectors
Extract multiple elements into an array.
// Array of strings
x('http://example.com', {
links: ['a@href'] // Returns array of all href attributes
})
// Array of objects
x('http://example.com', '.items', [{
title: 'h2',
price: '.price',
link: 'a@href'
}])
RegExp Selectors
Extract data using regular expressions with capture groups.
x('http://example.com', {
price: /\$(\d+\.\d{2})/, // Extracts "19.99" from "$19.99"
email: /[\w.]+@[\w.]+\.\w+/, // Extracts email address
orderId: /Order #([A-Z0-9-]+)/ // Extracts order ID from text
})
RegExp selectors return the first capture group if present, otherwise the full match. Returns null if no match is found.
Optional Fields (null/undefined)
Use null or undefined to define optional fields that always return null.
x('http://example.com', {
title: 'h1', // Required field
subtitle: null, // Optional field (always null)
description: undefined // Optional field (always null)
})
This is useful for defining a consistent schema where some fields may not always be present.
Custom Type Handlers
Register custom type handlers for specialized extraction logic.
const x = Xray()
// Define a custom type
function PriceType(selector) {
this.selector = selector
}
// Register the handler
x.type('price', function(value, $, scope, filters, callback) {
const text = $(value.selector).text()
const price = parseFloat(text.replace(/[^0-9.]/g, ''))
callback(null, isNaN(price) ? null : price)
}, function(value) {
return value instanceof PriceType
})
// Use the custom type
x('http://example.com', {
price: new PriceType('.price')
})(function(err, result) {
console.log(result.price) // Returns numeric price
})
Strict Mode
Enable strict type validation during development to catch selector type errors:
const x = Xray({ strict: true })
x('http://example.com', {
title: 'h1',
invalid: 123 // Throws TypeError in strict mode
})
TypeScript Support
X-ray now includes TypeScript definitions for type-safe scraping:
import XRay = require('@hmb-research/x-ray')
interface Article {
title: string
author: string
price: string | null
}
const xray = XRay()
const result = await xray('http://example.com', '.article', [{
title: 'h2',
author: '.author',
price: /\$(\d+\.\d{2})/
}])
// result is typed as Article[]
Composition
X-ray becomes more powerful when you start composing instances together. Here are a few possibilities:
Crawling to another site
var Xray = require('@hmb-research/x-ray')
var x = Xray()
x('http://google.com', {
main: 'title',
image: x('#gbar a@href', 'title') // follow link to google images
})(function(err, obj) {
/*
{
main: 'Google',
image: 'Google Images'
}
*/
})
Scoping a selection
var Xray = require('@hmb-research/x-ray')
var x = Xray()
x('http://mat.io', {
title: 'title',
items: x('.item', [
{
title: '.item-content h2',
description: '.item-content section'
}
])
})(function(err, obj) {
/*
{
title: 'mat.io',
items: [
{
title: 'The 100 Best Children\'s Books of All Time',
description: 'Relive your childhood with TIME\'s list...'
}
]
}
*/
})
Filters
Filters can specified when creating a new Xray instance. To apply filters to a value, append them to the selector using |.
var Xray = require('@hmb-research/x-ray')
var x = Xray({
filters: {
trim: function(value) {
return typeof value === 'string' ? value.trim() : value
},
reverse: function(value) {
return typeof value === 'string'
? value
.split('')
.reverse()
.join('')
: value
},
slice: function(value, start, end) {
return typeof value === 'string' ? value.slice(start, end) : value
}
}
})
x('http://mat.io', {
title: 'title | trim | reverse | slice:2,3'
})(function(err, obj) {
/*
{
title: 'oi'
}
*/
})
Examples
- selector: simple string selector
- collections: selects an object
- arrays: selects an array
- collections of collections: selects an array of objects
- array of arrays: selects an array of arrays
In the Wild
- Levered Returns: Uses x-ray to pull together financial data from various unstructured sources around the web.
Resources
Contributing
Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.
License
MIT
FAQs
structure any website
We found that @hmb-research/x-ray demonstrated a healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released less than a year ago. It has 1 open source maintainer collaborating on the project.
Package last updated on 10 Nov 2025
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