Laraue.Crawling packages

The set of tools for fast writing crawlers on .NET.

Static HTML crawling

Static means the crawling process is performing with the static html that not changes. You can build a strongly typed schema with binding each element to related html block. Then this schema can be parsed via AngleSharpParser class located in Laraue.Crawling.Static.AngleSharp library.

Build static HTML schema

<div>
    <div class="title">Private info</div>
    <div class="user">
        <div class="name">Alex</div>
        <div class="age">10</div>
        <div class="dogs">
            <div class="dog">
                <div class="name">Jelly</div>
                <div class="age">5</div>
            </div>
            <div class="dog">
                <div class="name">Marly</div>
                <div class="age">7</div>
            </div>
        </div>
    </div>
    <div class="links">
        <a href="https://hey1.html"></a>
        <a href="https://hey2.html"></a>
    </div>
</div>

public record OnePage(string Title, string[] ImageLinks, User User);
public record User(string Name, int Age, Dog[] Dogs);
public record Dog(string Name, int Age);


 var schema = new AngleSharpSchemaBuilder<OnePage>()
    .HasProperty(x => x.Title, ".title")
    .HasObjectProperty(x => x.User, ".user", userBuilder =>
    {
        userBuilder.HasProperty(x => x.Name, ".name")
            .HasProperty(x => x.Age, ".age")
            .HasArrayProperty(x => x.Dogs, ".dog", dogsBuilder =>
            {
                dogsBuilder.HasProperty(x => x.Age, ".age")
                    .HasProperty(x => x.Name, ".name");
            });
    })
    .HasArrayProperty(
        x => x.ImageLinks,
        ".links a",
        x => Task.FromResult(x.GetAttributeValue("href")))
    .Build();

Using of the static schema to parse the passed html

var parser = new AngleSharpParser(new NullLoggerFactory());

var html = await File.ReadAllTextAsync("test.html");
var model = await parser.RunAsync(schema, html);

Assert.Equal("Private info", model.Title);
Assert.Equal("Alex", model.User.Name);
Assert.Equal(10, model.User.Age);

var dogs = model.User.Dogs;
Assert.Equal(2, dogs.Length);

var dog1 = dogs[0];
Assert.Equal(5, dog1.Age);
Assert.Equal("Jelly", dog1.Name);

var dog2 = dogs[1];
Assert.Equal(7, dog2.Age);
Assert.Equal("Marly", dog2.Name);

var links = model.ImageLinks;
Assert.Equal(2, links.Length);
Assert.Equal("https://hey1.html", links[0]);
Assert.Equal("https://hey2.html", links[1]);

Element schema

Sometimes the full schema binding is not necessary (only one value is required). Then the element schema class can be used.

var dogNamesSchema = new AngleSharpElementSchema<string[]>(builder => builder.UseSelector(".dog .name"));

var parser = new AngleSharpParser(new NullLoggerFactory());
var html = await File.ReadAllTextAsync("test.html");
var dogNames = await parser.RunAsync(schema, html);

Assert.Equal(2, dogNames.Length);
Assert.Equal("Jelly", dogNames[0]);
Assert.Equal("Marly", dogNames[1]);

Dynamic HTML crawling

The package Laraue.Crawling.Dynamic.PuppeterSharp intended to parse schemas using PuppeterSharp library. Let's rewrite static schema to the dynamic format:

public record OnePage(string Title, string[] ImageLinks, User User);
public record User(string Name, int Age, Dog[] Dogs);
public record Dog(string Name, int Age);


var schema = new PuppeterSharpSchemaBuilder<OnePage>()
    .HasProperty(x => x.Title, ".title")
    .HasObjectProperty(x => x.User, ".user", userBuilder =>
    {
        userBuilder.HasProperty(x => x.Name, ".name")
            .HasProperty(x => x.Age, ".age")
            .HasArrayProperty(x => x.Dogs, ".dog", dogsBuilder =>
            {
                dogsBuilder.HasProperty(x => x.Age, ".age")
                    .HasProperty(x => x.Name, ".name");
            });
    })
    .HasArrayProperty(
        x => x.ImageLinks,
        ".links a",
        async handle => await handle.GetAttributeValueAsync("href"))
    .Build();

The main difference that all functions now interacts with ElementHandle class from PuppeterSharp library. The crawling can be executed this way:

await new BrowserFetcher().DownloadAsync();
await using var browser = await Puppeteer.LaunchAsync(new LaunchOptions());
var page = await browser.NewPageAsync();
var response = await page.GoToAsync(link);
var model = await _parser.RunAsync(schema, await page.QuerySelectorAsync("body"));

Extended features

Sometimes binding of html element to property is not enough. For example - one string should be divided into three elements.

<p class="info">
    Bob Martin 37
</p>

record User(string Name, string Surname, int Age);
var schema = new PuppeterSharpSchemaBuilder<User>()
    .BindManually(async (element, modelBinder) => {
        var element = await element.QuerySelectorAsync(".info");
        if (element is null) return;
        var elementText = await element.GetInnerTextAsync();
        var stringParts = elementText.Split(' ');
        if (stringParts.Length != 3) return;
        modelBinder.BindProperty(x => x.Name, stringParts[0]);
        modelBinder.BindProperty(x => x.Surname, stringParts[1]);
        modelBinder.BindProperty(x => x.Age, int.Parse(stringParts[2]));
    })

XML static crawling

<all>
    <note>
        <to id="15">Tove</to>
        <body>Don't forget me this weekend!</body>
    </note>
    <note>
        <to id="16">Max</to>
        <body>Hi!</body>
    </note>
</all>

Use class XmlSchemaBuilder to build the schema.

var schema = new XmlSchemaBuilder<XmlContent>()
    .HasArrayProperty<Note>(x => x.Notes, "//note", builder =>
    {
        builder.HasProperty(y => y.Body, b => b.UseSelector("body"));
        builder.HasProperty(y => y.Id, b => b
            .UseSelector("to")
            .GetInnerTextFromAttribute("id"));
    })
    .Build();

Schema parsing

var parser = new XmlParser(new NullLoggerFactory());
var xmlDocument = new XmlDocument();
xmlDocument.LoadXml(xml);
        
var result = await parser.RunAsync(schema, xmlDocument);

Assert.NotEmpty(result!.Notes);
var notes = result.Notes.ToArray();

Assert.Equal("Don't forget me this weekend!", notes[0].Body);
Assert.Equal(15, notes[0].Id);

Assert.Equal("Hi!", notes[1].Body);
Assert.Equal(16, notes[1].Id);