scraper

node-scraper

A little module that makes scraping websites a little easier. Uses node.js and jQuery.

Installation

Via npm:

$ npm install scraper

Examples

Simple

First argument is an url as a string, second is a callback which exposes a jQuery object with your scraped site as "body" and third is an object from the request containing info about the url.

var scraper = require('scraper');
scraper('http://search.twitter.com/search?q=javascript', function(err, jQuery) {
    if (err) {throw err}

    jQuery('.msg').each(function() {
        console.log(jQuery(this).text().trim()+'\n');
    });
});

"Advanced"

First argument is an object containing settings for the "request" instance used internally, second is a callback which exposes a jQuery object with your scraped site as "body" and third is an object from the request containing info about the url.

var scraper = require('scraper');
scraper(
    {
       'uri': 'http://search.twitter.com/search?q=nodejs'
           , 'headers': {
               'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0)'
           }
    }
    , function(err, $) {
        if (err) {throw err}

        $('.msg').each(function() {
            console.log($(this).text().trim()+'\n');
        });
    }
);

Parallel

First argument is an array containing either strings or objects, second is a callback which exposes a jQuery object with your scraped site as "body" and third is an object from the request containing info about the url.

You can also add rate limiting to the fetcher by adding an options object as the third argument containing 'reqPerSec': float.

var scraper = require('scraper');
scraper(
    [
        'http://search.twitter.com/search?q=javascript'
        , 'http://search.twitter.com/search?q=css'
        , {
            'uri': 'http://search.twitter.com/search?q=nodejs'
            , 'headers': {
                'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0)'
            }
        }
        , 'http://search.twitter.com/search?q=html5'
    ]
    , function(err, $) {
        if (err) {throw err;}

        $('.msg').each(function() {
            console.log($(this).text().trim()+'\n');
        });
    }
    , {
        'reqPerSec': 0.2 // Wait 5sec between each external request
    }
);

Arguments

First (required)

Contains the info about what page/pages will be scraped

string

'http://www.nodejs.org'

or

request object

{
   'uri': 'http://search.twitter.com/search?q=nodejs'
       , 'headers': {
           'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0)'
       }
}

or

Array (if you want to do fetches on multiple URLs)

[
    urlString
    , urlString
    , requestObject
    , urlString
]

Second (optional)

The callback that allows you do use the data retrieved from the fetch.

function(err, $) {
    if (err) {throw err;}
    
    $('.msg').each(function() {
        console.log($(this).text().trim()+'\n');
    }
}

Third (optional)

This argument is an object containing settings for the fetcher overall.

• reqPerSec: float; (allows you to throttle your fetches so you don't hammer the server you are scraping)

Depends on

• tmpvar's jsdom
• mikeal's request
• jquery