kairstenfay / robobrowser

RoboBrowser: Your friendly neighborhood web scraper ===============================================

Homepage: http://robobrowser.readthedocs.org/

RoboBrowser is a simple, Pythonic library for browsing the web without a standalone web browser. RoboBrowser can fetch a page, click on links and buttons, and fill out and submit forms. If you need to interact with web services that don't have APIs, RoboBrowser can help.

import re
from robobrowser import RoboBrowser

# Browse to Genius
browser = RoboBrowser(history=True)
browser.open('http://genius.com/')

# Search for Porcupine Tree
form = browser.get_form(action='/search')
form                # <RoboForm q=>
form['q'].value = 'porcupine tree'
browser.submit_form(form)

# Look up the first song
songs = browser.select('.song_link')
browser.follow_link(songs[0])
lyrics = browser.select('.lyrics')
lyrics[0].text      # \nHear the sound of music ...

# Back to results page
browser.back()

# Look up my favorite song
song_link = browser.get_link('trains')
browser.follow_link(song_link)

# Can also search HTML using regex patterns
lyrics = browser.find(class_=re.compile(r'\blyrics\b'))
lyrics.text         # \nTrain set and match spied under the blind...

RoboBrowser combines the best of two excellent Python libraries: Requests and BeautifulSoup. RoboBrowser represents browser sessions using Requests and HTML responses using BeautifulSoup, transparently exposing methods of both libraries:

import re
from robobrowser import RoboBrowser

browser = RoboBrowser(user_agent='a python robot')
browser.open('https://github.com/')

# Inspect the browser session
browser.session.cookies['_gh_sess']         # BAh7Bzo...
browser.session.headers['User-Agent']       # a python robot

# Search the parsed HTML
browser.select('div.teaser-icon')       # [<div class="teaser-icon">
                                        # <span class="mega-octicon octicon-checklist"></span>
                                        # </div>,
                                        # ...
browser.find(class_=re.compile(r'column', re.I))    # <div class="one-third column">
                                                    # <div class="teaser-icon">
                                                    # <span class="mega-octicon octicon-checklist"></span>
                                                    # ...

You can also pass a custom Session instance for lower-level configuration:

from requests import Session
from robobrowser import RoboBrowser

session = Session()
session.verify = False  # Skip SSL verification
session.proxies = {'http': 'http://custom.proxy.com/'}  # Set default proxies
browser = RoboBrowser(session=session)

RoboBrowser also includes tools for working with forms, inspired by WebTest and Mechanize.

from robobrowser import RoboBrowser

browser = RoboBrowser()
browser.open('http://twitter.com')

# Get the signup form
signup_form = browser.get_form(class_='signup')
signup_form         # <RoboForm user[name]=, user[email]=, ...

# Inspect its values
signup_form['authenticity_token'].value     # 6d03597 ...

# Fill it out
signup_form['user[name]'].value = 'python-robot'
signup_form['user[user_password]'].value = 'secret'

# Submit the form
browser.submit_form(signup_form)

Checkboxes:

from robobrowser import RoboBrowser

# Browse to a page with checkbox inputs
browser = RoboBrowser()
browser.open('http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_forms.asp')

# Find the form
form = browser.get_forms()[3]
form                            # <RoboForm vehicle=[]>
form['vehicle']                 # <robobrowser.forms.fields.Checkbox...>

# Checked values can be get and set like lists
form['vehicle'].options         # [u'Bike', u'Car']
form['vehicle'].value           # []
form['vehicle'].value = ['Bike']
form['vehicle'].value = ['Bike', 'Car']

# Values can also be set using input labels
form['vehicle'].labels          # [u'I have a bike', u'I have a car \r\n']
form['vehicle'].value = ['I have a bike']
form['vehicle'].value           # [u'Bike']

# Only values that correspond to checkbox values or labels can be set;
# this will raise a `ValueError`
form['vehicle'].value = ['Hot Dogs']

Uploading files:

from robobrowser import RoboBrowser

# Browse to a page with an upload form
browser = RoboBrowser()
browser.open('http://cgi-lib.berkeley.edu/ex/fup.html')

# Find the form
upload_form = browser.get_form()
upload_form                     # <RoboForm upfile=, note=>

# Choose a file to upload
upload_form['upfile']           # <robobrowser.forms.fields.FileInput...>
upload_form['upfile'].value = open('path/to/file.txt', 'r')

# Submit
browser.submit(upload_form)

By default, creating a browser instantiates a new requests Session.

Requirements

• Python >= 2.6 or >= 3.3

License

MIT licensed. See the bundled LICENSE file for more details.