Scrapy

Python web-crawling framework

Scrapy (/ˈskrp/[1] SKRAY-peye) is a free and open-source web-crawling framework written in Python. Originally designed for web scraping, it can also be used to extract data using APIs or as a general-purpose web crawler.[2] It is currently maintained by Zyte (formerly Scrapinghub), a web-scraping development and services company.

Scrapy
Developer(s)Zyte (formerly Scrapinghub)
Initial release26 June 2008 (2008-06-26)
Written inPython
Operating systemWindows, macOS, Linux
TypeWeb crawler
LicenseBSD License

Scrapy project architecture is built around "spiders", which are self-contained crawlers that are given a set of instructions. Following the spirit of other don't repeat yourself frameworks, such as Django,[3] it makes it easier to build and scale large crawling projects by allowing developers to reuse their code.

Some well-known companies and products using Scrapy are: Lyst,[4][5] Parse.ly,[6] Sayone Technologies,[7] Sciences Po Medialab,[8] Data.gov.uk’s World Government Data site.[9]

History

Scrapy was born at London-based web-aggregation and e-commerce company Mydeco, where it was developed and maintained by employees of Mydeco and Insophia (a web-consulting company based in Montevideo, Uruguay). The first public release was in August 2008 under the BSD license, with a milestone 1.0 release happening in June 2015.[10] In 2011, Zyte (formerly Scrapinghub) became the new official maintainer.[11][12]

References

  1. ^ "Commit 975f150". Archived from the original on 2021-10-18. Retrieved 2021-10-18.
  2. ^ Scrapy at a glance Archived 2018-09-17 at the Wayback Machine.
  3. ^ "Frequently Asked Questions". Frequently Asked Questions, Scrapy 2.8.0 documentation. Archived from the original on 11 November 2020. Retrieved 28 July 2015.
  4. ^ Bell, Eddie; Heusser, Jonathan. "Scalable Scraping Using Machine Learning". Archived from the original on 4 June 2016. Retrieved 28 July 2015.
  5. ^ "Scrapy | Companies using Scrapy". Archived from the original on 2020-11-12. Retrieved 2015-07-28.
  6. ^ Montalenti, Andrew (October 27, 2012). "Web Crawling & Metadata Extraction in Python". Web Crawling & Metadata Extraction in Python - Speaker Deck. Archived from the original on September 19, 2020. Retrieved May 11, 2015.
  7. ^ "Scrapy Companies". Scrapy | Companies using Scrapy. Archived from the original on 2020-11-12. Retrieved 2017-11-09.
  8. ^ "Hyphe v0.0.0: the first release of our new webcrawler is out!". Archived from the original on 2016-06-13. Retrieved 2015-07-28.
  9. ^ Ben Firshman [@bfirsh] (21 January 2010). "World Govt Data site uses Django, Solr, Haystack, Scrapy and other exciting buzzwords http://bit.ly/5jU3La #opendata #datastore" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  10. ^ Medina, Julia (19 June 2015). "Scrapy 1.0 official release out!". scrapy-users (Mailing list). Archived from the original on 25 January 2010. Retrieved 28 July 2015.
  11. ^ Hoffman, Pablo (2013). List of the primary authors & contributors. Archived from the original on 29 May 2017. Retrieved 18 November 2013.
  12. ^ Interview Scraping Hub Archived 2020-10-29 at the Wayback Machine.