ScrapingAnt API client for Python

scrapingant-client is the official library to access ScrapingAnt API from your Python applications. It provides useful features like parameters encoding to improve the ScrapingAnt usage experience. Requires python 3.6+.

• Quick Start
• API token
• API Reference
• Exceptions
• Examples
• Useful links

Quick Start

from scrapingant_client import ScrapingAntClient

client = ScrapingAntClient(token='<YOUR-SCRAPINGANT-API-TOKEN>')
# Scrape the example.com site
result = client.general_request('https://example.com')
print(result.content)

Install

pip install scrapingant-client

If you need async support:

pip install scrapingant-client[async]

API token

In order to get API token you'll need to register at ScrapingAnt Service

API Reference

All public classes, methods and their parameters can be inspected in this API reference.

ScrapingAntClient(token)

Main class of this library.

ScrapingAntClient.general_request and ScrapingAntClient.general_request_async

https://docs.scrapingant.com/request-response-format#available-parameters

IMPORTANT NOTE: js_snippet will be encoded to Base64 automatically by the ScrapingAnt client library.

Cookie

Class defining cookie. Currently it supports only name and value

Response

Class defining response from API.

Exceptions

ScrapingantClientException is base Exception class, used for all errors.

Examples

Sending custom cookies

from scrapingant_client import ScrapingAntClient
from scrapingant_client import Cookie

client = ScrapingAntClient(token='<YOUR-SCRAPINGANT-API-TOKEN>')

result = client.general_request(
    'https://httpbin.org/cookies',
    cookies=[
        Cookie(name='cookieName1', value='cookieVal1'),
        Cookie(name='cookieName2', value='cookieVal2'),
    ]
)
print(result.content)
# Response cookies is a list of Cookie objects
# They can be used in next requests
response_cookies = result.cookies 

Executing custom JS snippet

from scrapingant_client import ScrapingAntClient

client = ScrapingAntClient(token='<YOUR-SCRAPINGANT-API-TOKEN>')

customJsSnippet = """
var str = 'Hello, world!';
var htmlElement = document.getElementsByTagName('html')[0];
htmlElement.innerHTML = str;
"""
result = client.general_request(
    'https://example.com',
    js_snippet=customJsSnippet,
)
print(result.content)

Exception handling and retries

from scrapingant_client import ScrapingAntClient, ScrapingantClientException, ScrapingantInvalidInputException

client = ScrapingAntClient(token='<YOUR-SCRAPINGANT-API-TOKEN>')

RETRIES_COUNT = 3


def parse_html(html: str):
    ...  # Implement your data extraction here


parsed_data = None
for retry_number in range(RETRIES_COUNT):
    try:
        scrapingant_response = client.general_request(
            'https://example.com',
        )
    except ScrapingantInvalidInputException as e:
        print(f'Got invalid input exception: {{repr(e)}}')
        break  # We are not retrying if request params are not valid
    except ScrapingantClientException as e:
        print(f'Got ScrapingAnt exception {repr(e)}')
    except Exception as e:
        print(f'Got unexpected exception {repr(e)}')  # please report this kind of exceptions by creating a new issue
    else:
        try:
            parsed_data = parse_html(scrapingant_response.content)
            break  # Data is parsed successfully, so we dont need to retry
        except Exception as e:
            print(f'Got exception while parsing data {repr(e)}')

if parsed_data is None:
    print(f'Failed to retrieve and parse data after {RETRIES_COUNT} tries')
    # Can sleep and retry later, or stop the script execution, and research the reason 
else:
    print(f'Successfully parsed data: {parsed_data}')

Sending custom headers

from scrapingant_client import ScrapingAntClient

client = ScrapingAntClient(token='<YOUR-SCRAPINGANT-API-TOKEN>')

result = client.general_request(
    'https://httpbin.org/headers',
    headers={
        'test-header': 'test-value'
    }
)
print(result.content)

# Http basic auth example
result = client.general_request(
    'https://jigsaw.w3.org/HTTP/Basic/',
    headers={'Authorization': 'Basic Z3Vlc3Q6Z3Vlc3Q='}
)
print(result.content)

Simple async example

import asyncio

from scrapingant_client import ScrapingAntClient

client = ScrapingAntClient(token='<YOUR-SCRAPINGANT-API-TOKEN>')


async def main():
    # Scrape the example.com site
    result = await client.general_request_async('https://example.com')
    print(result.content)


asyncio.run(main())

Sending POST request

from scrapingant_client import ScrapingAntClient

client = ScrapingAntClient(token='<YOUR-SCRAPINGANT-API-TOKEN>')

# Sending POST request with json data
result = client.general_request(
    url="https://httpbin.org/post",
    method="POST",
    json={"test": "test"},
)
print(result.content)

# Sending POST request with bytes data
result = client.general_request(
    url="https://httpbin.org/post",
    method="POST",
    data=b'test_bytes',
)
print(result.content)

Useful links

• Scrapingant API doumentation
• Scrapingant JS Client