Apify SDK
Apify SDK provides the tools required to run your own Apify Actors. The crawlers and scraping related tools, previously included in Apify SDK (v2), have been split into a brand-new module - crawlee
, while keeping the Apify specific parts in this module.
Would you like to work with us on Crawlee, Apify SDK or similar projects? We are hiring Node.js engineers.
Upgrading from v2
A lot of things have changed since version 2 of the Apify SDK, including the split of the crawlers to the new crawlee
module. We've written a guide to help you easily migrate from v2 to v3. Visit the Upgrading Guide to find out what changes you need to make (especially the section related to this very Apify SDK), and, if you encounter any issues, join our Discord server for help!
Quick Start
This short tutorial will set you up to start using Apify SDK in a minute or two.
If you want to learn more, proceed to the Apify Platform
guide that will take you step by step through running your Actor on Apify's platform.
Apify SDK requires Node.js 16 or later. Add Apify SDK to any Node.js project by running:
npm install apify crawlee playwright
For this example, we'll also install the crawlee
module, as it now provides the crawlers that were previously exported by Apify SDK. If you don't plan to use crawlers in your Actors, then you don't need to install it. Keep in mind that neither playwright
nor puppeteer
are bundled with crawlee
in order to reduce install size and allow greater flexibility. That's why we manually install it with NPM. You can choose one, both, or neither.
There are two ways to initialize your Actor: by using the Actor.main()
function you're probably used to, or by calling Actor.init()
and Actor.exit()
manually. We prefer explicitly calling init
and exit
.
Using Actor.init()
and Actor.exit()
import { Actor } from 'apify';
import { PlaywrightCrawler } from 'crawlee';
await Actor.init()
const crawler = new PlaywrightCrawler({
async requestHandler({ request, page, enqueueLinks }) {
const title = await page.title();
console.log(`Title of ${request.url}: ${title}`);
await enqueueLinks();
},
});
await crawler.run(['https://crawlee.dev/']);
await Actor.exit();
Using Actor.main()
import { Actor } from 'apify';
import { PlaywrightCrawler } from 'crawlee';
await Actor.main(async () => {
const crawler = new PlaywrightCrawler({
async requestHandler({ request, page, enqueueLinks }) {
const title = await page.title();
console.log(`Title of ${request.url}: ${title}`);
await enqueueLinks();
},
});
await crawler.run(['https://crawlee.dev/']);
});
Support
If you find any bug or issue with the Apify SDK, please submit an issue on GitHub.
For questions, you can ask on Stack Overflow or contact support@apify.com
Contributing
Your code contributions are welcome, and you'll be praised to eternity!
If you have any ideas for improvements, either submit an issue or create a pull request.
For contribution guidelines and the code of conduct,
see CONTRIBUTING.md.
License
This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 -
see the LICENSE.md file for details.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Chema Balsas for giving up the apify
package name
on NPM and renaming his project to jsdocify.