Changelog
All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file. See Conventional Commits for commit guidelines.
3.11.5 (2024-10-04)
Bug Fixes
forefront
request fetching in RQv2 (#2689) (03951bd), closes #2669- core: accept
UInt8Array
inKVS.setValue()
(#2682) (8ef0e60) - decode special characters in proxy
username
andpassword
(#2696) (0f0fcc5)
3.11.4 (2024-09-23)
Bug Fixes
SitemapRequestList.teardown()
doesn't breakpersistState
calls (#2673) (fb2c5cd), closes /github.com/apify/crawlee/blob/f3eb99d9fa9a7aa0ec1dcb9773e666a9ac14fb76/packages/core/src/storages/sitemap_request_list.ts#L446 #2672
3.11.3 (2024-09-03)
Bug Fixes
- RequestQueueV2: reset recently handled cache too if the queue is pending for too long (#2656) (51a69bc)
3.11.2 (2024-08-28)
Bug Fixes
Features
globs
®exps
forSitemapRequestList
(#2631) (b5fd3a9)- resilient sitemap loading (#2619) (1dd7660)
3.11.1 (2024-07-24)
Note: Version bump only for package @crawlee/core
3.11.0 (2024-07-09)
Features
3.10.5 (2024-06-12)
Bug Fixes
3.10.4 (2024-06-11)
Bug Fixes
- add
waitForAllRequestsToBeAdded
option toenqueueLinks
helper (925546b), closes #2318 - respect
crawler.log
when creating child logger forStatistics
(0a0d75d), closes #2412
3.10.3 (2024-06-07)
Bug Fixes
- respect implicit router when no
requestHandler
is provided inAdaptiveCrawler
(#2518) (31083aa) - revert the scaling steps back to 5% (5bf32f8)
Features
3.10.2 (2024-06-03)
Note: Version bump only for package @crawlee/core
3.10.1 (2024-05-23)
Bug Fixes
- investigate and temp fix for possible 0-concurrency bug in RQv2 (#2494) (4ebe820)
- provide URLs to the error snapshot (#2482) (7f64145), closes /github.com/apify/apify-sdk-js/blob/master/packages/apify/src/key_value_store.ts#L25
3.10.0 (2024-05-16)
Bug Fixes
EnqueueStrategy.All
erroring with links using unsupported protocols (#2389) (8db3908)- core: conversion between tough cookies and browser pool cookies (#2443) (74f73ab)
- core: fire local
SystemInfo
events every second (#2454) (1fa9a66) - core: use createSessionFunction when loading Session from persisted state (#2444) (3c56b4c)
- double tier decrement in tiered proxy (#2468) (3a8204b)
Features
- implement ErrorSnapshotter for error context capture (#2332) (e861dfd), closes #2280
- make
RequestQueue
v2 the default queue, see more on Apify blog (#2390) (41ae8ab), closes #2388
Performance Improvements
- improve scaling based on memory (#2459) (2d5d443)
- optimize
RequestList
memory footprint (#2466) (12210bd) - optimize adding large amount of requests via
crawler.addRequests()
(#2456) (6da86a8)
3.9.2 (2024-04-17)
Bug Fixes
3.9.1 (2024-04-11)
Note: Version bump only for package @crawlee/core
3.9.0 (2024-04-10)
Bug Fixes
- include actual key in error message of KVS'
setValue
(#2411) (9089bf1) - notify autoscaled pool about newly added requests (#2400) (a90177d)
Features
createAdaptivePlaywrightRouter
utility (#2415) (cee4778), closes #2407tieredProxyUrls
for ProxyConfiguration (#2348) (5408c7f)- better
newUrlFunction
for ProxyConfiguration (#2392) (330598b), closes #2348 #2065
3.8.2 (2024-03-21)
Bug Fixes
- core: solve possible dead locks in
RequestQueueV2
(#2376) (ffba095) - use 0 (number) instead of false as default for sessionRotationCount (#2372) (667a3e7)
Features
- implement global storage access checking and use it to prevent unwanted side effects in adaptive crawler (#2371) (fb3b7da), closes #2364
3.8.1 (2024-02-22)
Bug Fixes
3.8.0 (2024-02-21)
Bug Fixes
Features
KeyValueStore.recordExists()
(#2339) (8507a65)- accessing crawler state, key-value store and named datasets via crawling context (#2283) (58dd5fc)
- adaptive playwright crawler (#2316) (8e4218a)
3.7.3 (2024-01-30)
Bug Fixes
3.7.2 (2024-01-09)
Bug Fixes
3.7.1 (2024-01-02)
Note: Version bump only for package @crawlee/core
3.7.0 (2023-12-21)
Bug Fixes
retryOnBlocked
doesn't override the blocked HTTP codes (#2243) (81672c3)- filter out empty globs (#2205) (41322ab), closes #2200
- make SessionPool queue up getSession calls to prevent overruns (#2239) (0f5665c), closes #1667
Features
- allow configuring crawler statistics (#2213) (9fd60e4), closes #1789
- check enqueue link strategy post redirect (#2238) (3c5f9d6), closes #2173
3.6.2 (2023-11-26)
Bug Fixes
3.6.1 (2023-11-15)
Bug Fixes
- ts: specify type explicitly for logger (aec3550)
3.6.0 (2023-11-15)
Bug Fixes
- add
skipNavigation
option toenqueueLinks
(#2153) (118515d) - core: respect some advanced options for
RequestList.open()
+ improve docs (#2158) (c5a1b07) - declare missing dependency on got-scraping in the core package (cd2fd4d)
- retry incorrect Content-Type when response has blocked status code (#2176) (b54fb8b), closes #1994
Features
3.5.8 (2023-10-17)
Note: Version bump only for package @crawlee/core
3.5.7 (2023-10-05)
Bug Fixes
3.5.6 (2023-10-04)
Bug Fixes
3.5.5 (2023-10-02)
Bug Fixes
- session pool leaks memory on multiple crawler runs (#2083) (b96582a), closes #2074 #2031
- types: make return type of RequestProvider.open and RequestQueue(v2).open strict and accurate (#2096) (dfaddb9)
Features
3.5.4 (2023-09-11)
Bug Fixes
- core: allow explicit calls to
purgeDefaultStorage
to wipe the storage on each call (#2060) (4831f07) - various helpers opening KVS now respect Configuration (#2071) (59dbb16)
3.5.3 (2023-08-31)
Bug Fixes
- browser-pool: improve error handling when browser is not found (#2050) (282527f), closes #1459
- crawler instances with different StorageClients do not affect each other (#2056) (3f4c863)
- pin all internal dependencies (#2041) (d6f2b17), closes #2040
Features
3.5.2 (2023-08-21)
Bug Fixes
3.5.1 (2023-08-16)
Bug Fixes
- add
Request.maxRetries
to theRequestOptions
interface (#2024) (6433821) - log original error message on session rotation (#2022) (8a11ffb)
3.5.0 (2023-07-31)
Bug Fixes
- core: add requests from URL list (
requestsFromUrl
) to the queue in batches (418fbf8), closes #1995 - core: support relative links in
enqueueLinks
explicitly provided viaurls
option (#2014) (cbd9d08), closes #2005
Features
- core: use
RequestQueue.addBatchedRequests()
inenqueueLinks
helper (4d61ca9), closes #1995 - retire session on proxy error (#2002) (8c0928b), closes #1912
3.4.2 (2023-07-19)
Features
3.4.1 (2023-07-13)
Bug Fixes
- http-crawler: replace
IncomingMessage
withPlainResponse
for context'sresponse
(#1973) (2a1cc7f), closes #1964
3.4.0 (2023-06-12)
Features
- add LinkeDOMCrawler (#1907) (1c69560), closes /github.com/apify/crawlee/pull/1890#issuecomment-1533271694
3.3.3 (2023-05-31)
Features
- add support for
requestsFromUrl
toRequestQueue
(#1917) (7f2557c) - core: add
Request.maxRetries
to allow overriding themaxRequestRetries
(#1925) (c5592db)
3.3.2 (2023-05-11)
Bug Fixes
Features
- allow running single crawler instance multiple times (#1844) (9e6eb1e), closes #765
- router: allow inline router definition (#1877) (2d241c9)
- support alternate storage clients when opening storages (#1901) (661e550)
3.3.1 (2023-04-11)
Bug Fixes
- Storage: queue up opening storages to prevent issues in concurrent calls (#1865) (044c740)
- try to detect stuck request queue and fix its state (#1837) (95a9f94)
3.3.0 (2023-03-09)
Bug Fixes
Features
3.2.2 (2023-02-08)
Note: Version bump only for package @crawlee/core
3.2.1 (2023-02-07)
Bug Fixes
- add
QueueOperationInfo
export to the core package (5ec6c24)
3.2.0 (2023-02-07)
Bug Fixes
- clone
request.userData
when creating new request object (#1728) (222ef59), closes #1725 - declare missing dependency on
tslib
(27e96c8), closes #1747 - ensure CrawlingContext interface is inferred correctly in route handlers (aa84633)
- utils: add missing dependency on
ow
(bf0e03c), closes #1716
Features
- enqueueLinks: add SameOrigin strategy and relax protocol matching for the other strategies (#1748) (4ba982a)
3.1.3 (2022-12-07)
Note: Version bump only for package @crawlee/core
3.1.2 (2022-11-15)
Bug Fixes
- injectJQuery in context does not survive navs (#1661) (493a7cf)
- make router error message more helpful for undefined routes (#1678) (ab359d8)
- MemoryStorage: correctly respect the desc option (#1666) (b5f37f6)
- requestHandlerTimeout timing (#1660) (493ea0c)
- shallow clone browserPoolOptions before normalization (#1665) (22467ca)
- support headfull mode in playwright js project template (ea2e61b)
- support headfull mode in puppeteer js project template (e6aceb8)
Features
3.1.1 (2022-11-07)
Bug Fixes
utils.playwright.blockRequests
warning message (#1632) (76549eb)- concurrency option override order (#1649) (7bbad03)
- handle non-error objects thrown gracefully (#1652) (c3a4e1a)
- mark session as bad on failed requests (#1647) (445ae43)
- support reloading of sessions with lots of retries (ebc89d2)
- fix type errors when
playwright
is not installed (#1637) (de9db0c) - upgrade to puppeteer@19.x (#1623) (ce36d6b)
Features
- add static
set
anduseStorageClient
shortcuts toConfiguration
(2e66fa2) - enable migration testing (#1583) (ee3a68f)
- playwright: disable animations when taking screenshots (#1601) (4e63034)
3.1.0 (2022-10-13)
Bug Fixes
- add overload for
KeyValueStore.getValue
with defaultValue (#1541) (e3cb509) - add retry attempts to methods in CLI (#1588) (9142e59)
- allow
label
inenqueueLinksByClickingElements
options (#1525) (18b7c25) - basic-crawler: handle
request.noRetry
aftererrorHandler
(#1542) (2a2040e) - build storage classes by using
this
instead of the class (#1596) (2b14eb7) - correct some typing exports (#1527) (4a136e5)
- do not hide stack trace of (retried) Type/Syntax/ReferenceErrors (469b4b5)
- enqueueLinks: ensure the enqueue strategy is respected alongside user patterns (#1509) (2b0eeed)
- enqueueLinks: prevent useless request creations when filtering by user patterns (#1510) (cb8fe36)
- export
Cookie
fromcrawlee
metapackage (7b02ceb) - handle redirect cookies (#1521) (2f7fc7c)
- http-crawler: do not hang on POST without payload (#1546) (8c87390)
- remove undeclared dependency on core package from puppeteer utils (827ae60)
- support TypeScript 4.8 (#1507) (4c3a504)
- wait for persist state listeners to run when event manager closes (#1481) (aa550ed)
Features
- add
Dataset.exportToValue
(#1553) (acc6344) - add
Dataset.getData()
shortcut (522ed6e) - add
utils.downloadListOfUrls
to crawlee metapackage (7b33b0a) - add
utils.parseOpenGraph()
(#1555) (059f85e) - add
utils.playwright.compileScript
(#1559) (2e14162) - add
utils.playwright.infiniteScroll
(#1543) (60c8289), closes #1528 - add
utils.playwright.saveSnapshot
(#1544) (a4ceef0) - add global
useState
helper (#1551) (2b03177) - add static
Dataset.exportToValue
(#1564) (a7c17d4) - allow disabling storage persistence (#1539) (f65e3c6)
- bump puppeteer support to 17.x (#1519) (b97a852)
- core: add
forefront
option toenqueueLinks
helper (f8755b6), closes #1595 - don't close page before calling errorHandler (#1548) (1c8cd82)
- enqueue links by clicking for Playwright (#1545) (3d25ade)
- error tracker (#1467) (6bfe1ce)
- make the CLI download directly from GitHub (#1540) (3ff398a)
- router: add userdata generic to addHandler (#1547) (19cdf13)
- use JSON5 for
INPUT.json
to support comments (#1538) (09133ff)
3.0.4 (2022-08-22)
Features
- bump puppeteer support to 15.1
Bug Fixes
- key value stores emitting an error when multiple write promises ran in parallel (#1460) (f201cca)
- fix dockerfiles in project templates
3.0.3 (2022-08-11)
Fixes
- add missing configuration to CheerioCrawler constructor (#1432)
- sendRequest types (#1445)
- respect
headless
option in browser crawlers (#1455) - make
CheerioCrawlerOptions
type more loose (d871d8c) - improve dockerfiles and project templates (7c21a64)
Features
- add
utils.playwright.blockRequests()
(#1447) - http-crawler (#1440)
- prefer
/INPUT.json
files forKeyValueStore.getInput()
(#1453) - jsdom-crawler (#1451)
- add
RetryRequestError
+ add error to the context for BC (#1443) - add
keepAlive
to crawler options (#1452)
3.0.2 (2022-07-28)
Fixes
- regression in resolving the base url for enqueue link filtering (1422)
- improve file saving on memory storage (1421)
- add
UserData
type argument toCheerioCrawlingContext
and related interfaces (1424) - always limit
desiredConcurrency
to the value ofmaxConcurrency
(bcb689d) - wait for storage to finish before resolving
crawler.run()
(9d62d56) - using explicitly typed router with
CheerioCrawler
(07b7e69) - declare dependency on
ow
in@crawlee/cheerio
package (be59f99) - use
crawlee@^3.0.0
in the CLI templates (6426f22) - fix building projects with TS when puppeteer and playwright are not installed (1404)
- enqueueLinks should respect full URL of the current request for relative link resolution (1427)
- use
desiredConcurrency: 10
as the default forCheerioCrawler
(1428)
Features
- feat: allow configuring what status codes will cause session retirement (1423)
- feat: add support for middlewares to the
Router
viause
method (1431)
3.0.1 (2022-07-26)
Fixes
- remove
JSONData
generic type arg fromCheerioCrawler
in (#1402) - rename default storage folder to just
storage
in (#1403) - remove trailing slash for proxyUrl in (#1405)
- run browser crawlers in headless mode by default in (#1409)
- rename interface
FailedRequestHandler
toErrorHandler
in (#1410) - ensure default route is not ignored in
CheerioCrawler
in (#1411) - add
headless
option toBrowserCrawlerOptions
in (#1412) - processing custom cookies in (#1414)
- enqueue link not finding relative links if the checked page is redirected in (#1416)
- fix building projects with TS when puppeteer and playwright are not installed in (#1404)
- calling
enqueueLinks
in browser crawler on page without any links in (385ca27) - improve error message when no default route provided in (04c3b6a)
Features
- feat: add parseWithCheerio for puppeteer & playwright in (#1418)
3.0.0 (2022-07-13)
This section summarizes most of the breaking changes between Crawlee (v3) and Apify SDK (v2). Crawlee is the spiritual successor to Apify SDK, so we decided to keep the versioning and release Crawlee as v3.
Crawlee vs Apify SDK
Up until version 3 of apify
, the package contained both scraping related tools and Apify platform related helper methods. With v3 we are splitting the whole project into two main parts:
- Crawlee, the new web-scraping library, available as
crawlee
package on NPM - Apify SDK, helpers for the Apify platform, available as
apify
package on NPM
Moreover, the Crawlee library is published as several packages under @crawlee
namespace:
@crawlee/core
: the base for all the crawler implementations, also contains things likeRequest
,RequestQueue
,RequestList
orDataset
classes@crawlee/basic
: exportsBasicCrawler
@crawlee/cheerio
: exportsCheerioCrawler
@crawlee/browser
: exportsBrowserCrawler
(which is used for creating@crawlee/playwright
and@crawlee/puppeteer
)@crawlee/playwright
: exportsPlaywrightCrawler
@crawlee/puppeteer
: exportsPuppeteerCrawler
@crawlee/memory-storage
:@apify/storage-local
alternative@crawlee/browser-pool
: previouslybrowser-pool
package@crawlee/utils
: utility methods@crawlee/types
: holds TS interfaces mainly about theStorageClient
Installing Crawlee
As Crawlee is not yet released as
latest
, we need to install from thenext
distribution tag!
Most of the Crawlee packages are extending and reexporting each other, so it's enough to install just the one you plan on using, e.g. @crawlee/playwright
if you plan on using playwright
- it already contains everything from the @crawlee/browser
package, which includes everything from @crawlee/basic
, which includes everything from @crawlee/core
.
npm install crawlee@next
Or if all we need is cheerio support, we can install only @crawlee/cheerio
npm install @crawlee/cheerio@next
When using playwright
or puppeteer
, we still need to install those dependencies explicitly - this allows the users to be in control of which version will be used.
npm install crawlee@next playwright
# or npm install @crawlee/playwright@next playwright
Alternatively we can also use the crawlee
meta-package which contains (re-exports) most of the @crawlee/*
packages, and therefore contains all the crawler classes.
Sometimes you might want to use some utility methods from
@crawlee/utils
, so you might want to install that as well. This package contains some utilities that were previously available underApify.utils
. Browser related utilities can be also found in the crawler packages (e.g.@crawlee/playwright
).
Full TypeScript support
Both Crawlee and Apify SDK are full TypeScript rewrite, so they include up-to-date types in the package. For your TypeScript crawlers we recommend using our predefined TypeScript configuration from @apify/tsconfig
package. Don't forget to set the module
and target
to ES2022
or above to be able to use top level await.
The
@apify/tsconfig
config hasnoImplicitAny
enabled, you might want to disable it during the initial development as it will cause build failures if you left some unused local variables in your code.
{
"extends": "@apify/tsconfig",
"compilerOptions": {
"module": "ES2022",
"target": "ES2022",
"outDir": "dist",
"lib": ["DOM"]
},
"include": [
"./src/**/*"
]
}
Docker build
For Dockerfile
we recommend using multi-stage build, so you don't install the dev dependencies like TypeScript in your final image:
# using multistage build, as we need dev deps to build the TS source code
FROM apify/actor-node:16 AS builder
# copy all files, install all dependencies (including dev deps) and build the project
COPY . ./
RUN npm install --include=dev \
&& npm run build
# create final image
FROM apify/actor-node:16
# copy only necessary files
COPY /usr/src/app/package*.json ./
COPY /usr/src/app/README.md ./
COPY /usr/src/app/dist ./dist
COPY /usr/src/app/apify.json ./apify.json
COPY /usr/src/app/INPUT_SCHEMA.json ./INPUT_SCHEMA.json
# install only prod deps
RUN npm --quiet set progress=false \
&& npm install --only=prod --no-optional \
&& echo "Installed NPM packages:" \
&& (npm list --only=prod --no-optional --all || true) \
&& echo "Node.js version:" \
&& node --version \
&& echo "NPM version:" \
&& npm --version
# run compiled code
CMD npm run start:prod
Browser fingerprints
Previously we had a magical stealth
option in the puppeteer crawler that enabled several tricks aiming to mimic the real users as much as possible. While this worked to a certain degree, we decided to replace it with generated browser fingerprints.
In case we don't want to have dynamic fingerprints, we can disable this behaviour via useFingerprints
in browserPoolOptions
:
const crawler = new PlaywrightCrawler({
browserPoolOptions: {
useFingerprints: false,
},
});
Session cookie method renames
Previously, if we wanted to get or add cookies for the session that would be used for the request, we had to call session.getPuppeteerCookies()
or session.setPuppeteerCookies()
. Since this method could be used for any of our crawlers, not just PuppeteerCrawler
, the methods have been renamed to session.getCookies()
and session.setCookies()
respectively. Otherwise, their usage is exactly the same!
Memory storage
When we store some data or intermediate state (like the one RequestQueue
holds), we now use @crawlee/memory-storage
by default. It is an alternative to the @apify/storage-local
, that stores the state inside memory (as opposed to SQLite database used by @apify/storage-local
). While the state is stored in memory, it also dumps it to the file system, so we can observe it, as well as respects the existing data stored in KeyValueStore (e.g. the INPUT.json
file).
When we want to run the crawler on Apify platform, we need to use Actor.init
or Actor.main
, which will automatically switch the storage client to ApifyClient
when on the Apify platform.
We can still use the @apify/storage-local
, to do it, first install it pass it to the Actor.init
or Actor.main
options:
@apify/storage-local
v2.1.0+ is required for Crawlee
import { Actor } from 'apify';
import { ApifyStorageLocal } from '@apify/storage-local';
const storage = new ApifyStorageLocal(/* options like `enableWalMode` belong here */);
await Actor.init({ storage });
Purging of the default storage
Previously the state was preserved between local runs, and we had to use --purge
argument of the apify-cli
. With Crawlee, this is now the default behaviour, we purge the storage automatically on Actor.init/main
call. We can opt out of it via purge: false
in the Actor.init
options.
Renamed crawler options and interfaces
Some options were renamed to better reflect what they do. We still support all the old parameter names too, but not at the TS level.
handleRequestFunction
->requestHandler
handlePageFunction
->requestHandler
handleRequestTimeoutSecs
->requestHandlerTimeoutSecs
handlePageTimeoutSecs
->requestHandlerTimeoutSecs
requestTimeoutSecs
->navigationTimeoutSecs
handleFailedRequestFunction
->failedRequestHandler
We also renamed the crawling context interfaces, so they follow the same convention and are more meaningful:
CheerioHandlePageInputs
->CheerioCrawlingContext
PlaywrightHandlePageFunction
->PlaywrightCrawlingContext
PuppeteerHandlePageFunction
->PuppeteerCrawlingContext
Context aware helpers
Some utilities previously available under Apify.utils
namespace are now moved to the crawling context and are context aware. This means they have some parameters automatically filled in from the context, like the current Request
instance or current Page
object, or the RequestQueue
bound to the crawler.
Enqueuing links
One common helper that received more attention is the enqueueLinks
. As mentioned above, it is context aware - we no longer need pass in the requestQueue
or page
arguments (or the cheerio handle $
). In addition to that, it now offers 3 enqueuing strategies:
EnqueueStrategy.All
('all'
): Matches any URLs foundEnqueueStrategy.SameHostname
('same-hostname'
) Matches any URLs that have the same subdomain as the base URL (default)EnqueueStrategy.SameDomain
('same-domain'
) Matches any URLs that have the same domain name. For example,https://wow.an.example.com
andhttps://example.com
will both be matched for a base url ofhttps://example.com
.
This means we can even call enqueueLinks()
without any parameters. By default, it will go through all the links found on current page and filter only those targeting the same subdomain.
Moreover, we can specify patterns the URL should match via globs:
const crawler = new PlaywrightCrawler({
async requestHandler({ enqueueLinks }) {
await enqueueLinks({
globs: ['https://apify.com/*/*'],
// we can also use `regexps` and `pseudoUrls` keys here
});
},
});
Implicit RequestQueue
instance
All crawlers now have the RequestQueue
instance automatically available via crawler.getRequestQueue()
method. It will create the instance for you if it does not exist yet. This mean we no longer need to create the RequestQueue
instance manually, and we can just use crawler.addRequests()
method described underneath.
We can still create the
RequestQueue
explicitly, thecrawler.getRequestQueue()
method will respect that and return the instance provided via crawler options.
crawler.addRequests()
We can now add multiple requests in batches. The newly added addRequests
method will handle everything for us. It enqueues the first 1000 requests and resolves, while continuing with the rest in the background, again in a smaller 1000 items batches, so we don't fall into any API rate limits. This means the crawling will start almost immediately (within few seconds at most), something previously possible only with a combination of RequestQueue
and RequestList
.
// will resolve right after the initial batch of 1000 requests is added
const result = await crawler.addRequests([/* many requests, can be even millions */]);
// if we want to wait for all the requests to be added, we can await the `waitForAllRequestsToBeAdded` promise
await result.waitForAllRequestsToBeAdded;
Less verbose error logging
Previously an error thrown from inside request handler resulted in full error object being logged. With Crawlee, we log only the error message as a warning as long as we know the request will be retried. If you want to enable verbose logging like in v2, use the CRAWLEE_VERBOSE_LOG
env var.
Removal of requestAsBrowser
In v1 we replaced the underlying implementation of requestAsBrowser
to be just a proxy over calling got-scraping
- our custom extension to got
that tries to mimic the real browsers as much as possible. With v3, we are removing the requestAsBrowser
, encouraging the use of got-scraping
directly.
For easier migration, we also added context.sendRequest()
helper that allows processing the context bound Request
object through got-scraping
:
const crawler = new BasicCrawler({
async requestHandler({ sendRequest, log }) {
// we can use the options parameter to override gotScraping options
const res = await sendRequest({ responseType: 'json' });
log.info('received body', res.body);
},
});
How to use sendRequest()
?
Removed options
The useInsecureHttpParser
option has been removed. It's permanently set to true
in order to better mimic browsers' behavior.
Got Scraping automatically performs protocol negotiation, hence we removed the useHttp2
option. It's set to true
- 100% of browsers nowadays are capable of HTTP/2 requests. Oh, more and more of the web is using it too!
Renamed options
In the requestAsBrowser
approach, some of the options were named differently. Here's a list of renamed options:
payload
This options represents the body to send. It could be a string
or a Buffer
. However, there is no payload
option anymore. You need to use body
instead. Or, if you wish to send JSON, json
. Here's an example:
// Before:
await Apify.utils.requestAsBrowser({ …, payload: 'Hello, world!' });
await Apify.utils.requestAsBrowser({ …, payload: Buffer.from('c0ffe', 'hex') });
await Apify.utils.requestAsBrowser({ …, json: { hello: 'world' } });
// After:
await gotScraping({ …, body: 'Hello, world!' });
await gotScraping({ …, body: Buffer.from('c0ffe', 'hex') });
await gotScraping({ …, json: { hello: 'world' } });
ignoreSslErrors
It has been renamed to https.rejectUnauthorized
. By default, it's set to false
for convenience. However, if you want to make sure the connection is secure, you can do the following:
// Before:
await Apify.utils.requestAsBrowser({ …, ignoreSslErrors: false });
// After:
await gotScraping({ …, https: { rejectUnauthorized: true } });
Please note: the meanings are opposite! So we needed to invert the values as well.
header-generator
options
useMobileVersion
, languageCode
and countryCode
no longer exist. Instead, you need to use headerGeneratorOptions
directly:
// Before:
await Apify.utils.requestAsBrowser({
…,
useMobileVersion: true,
languageCode: 'en',
countryCode: 'US',
});
// After:
await gotScraping({
…,
headerGeneratorOptions: {
devices: ['mobile'], // or ['desktop']
locales: ['en-US'],
},
});
timeoutSecs
In order to set a timeout, use timeout.request
(which is milliseconds now).
// Before:
await Apify.utils.requestAsBrowser({
…,
timeoutSecs: 30,
});
// After:
await gotScraping({
…,
timeout: {
request: 30 * 1000,
},
});
throwOnHttpErrors
throwOnHttpErrors
→ throwHttpErrors
. This options throws on unsuccessful HTTP status codes, for example 404
. By default, it's set to false
.
decodeBody
decodeBody
→ decompress
. This options decompresses the body. Defaults to true
- please do not change this or websites will break (unless you know what you're doing!).
abortFunction
This function used to make the promise throw on specific responses, if it returned true
. However, it wasn't that useful.
You probably want to cancel the request instead, which you can do in the following way:
const promise = gotScraping(…);
promise.on('request', request => {
// Please note this is not a Got Request instance, but a ClientRequest one.
// https://nodejs.org/api/http.html#class-httpclientrequest
if (request.protocol !== 'https:') {
// Unsecure request, abort.
promise.cancel();
// If you set `isStream` to `true`, please use `stream.destroy()` instead.
}
});
const response = await promise;
Removal of browser pool plugin mixing
Previously, you were able to have a browser pool that would mix Puppeteer and Playwright plugins (or even your own custom plugins if you've built any). As of this version, that is no longer allowed, and creating such a browser pool will cause an error to be thrown (it's expected that all plugins that will be used are of the same type).
Handling requests outside of browser
One small feature worth mentioning is the ability to handle requests with browser crawlers outside the browser. To do that, we can use a combination of Request.skipNavigation
and context.sendRequest()
.
Take a look at how to achieve this by checking out the Skipping navigation for certain requests example!
Logging
Crawlee exports the default log
instance directly as a named export. We also have a scoped log
instance provided in the crawling context - this one will log messages prefixed with the crawler name and should be preferred for logging inside the request handler.
const crawler = new CheerioCrawler({
async requestHandler({ log, request }) {
log.info(`Opened ${request.loadedUrl}`);
},
});
Auto-saved crawler state
Every crawler instance now has useState()
method that will return a state object we can use. It will be automatically saved when persistState
event occurs. The value is cached, so we can freely call this method multiple times and get the exact same reference. No need to worry about saving the value either, as it will happen automatically.
const crawler = new CheerioCrawler({
async requestHandler({ crawler }) {
const state = await crawler.useState({ foo: [] as number[] });
// just change the value, no need to care about saving it
state.foo.push(123);
},
});
Apify SDK
The Apify platform helpers can be now found in the Apify SDK (apify
NPM package). It exports the Actor
class that offers following static helpers:
ApifyClient
shortcuts:addWebhook()
,call()
,callTask()
,metamorph()
- helpers for running on Apify platform:
init()
,exit()
,fail()
,main()
,isAtHome()
,createProxyConfiguration()
- storage support:
getInput()
,getValue()
,openDataset()
,openKeyValueStore()
,openRequestQueue()
,pushData()
,setValue()
- events support:
on()
,off()
- other utilities:
getEnv()
,newClient()
,reboot()
Actor.main
is now just a syntax sugar around calling Actor.init()
at the beginning and Actor.exit()
at the end (plus wrapping the user function in try/catch block). All those methods are async and should be awaited - with node 16 we can use the top level await for that. In other words, following is equivalent:
import { Actor } from 'apify';
await Actor.init();
// your code
await Actor.exit('Crawling finished!');
import { Actor } from 'apify';
await Actor.main(async () => {
// your code
}, { statusMessage: 'Crawling finished!' });
Actor.init()
will conditionally set the storage implementation of Crawlee to the ApifyClient
when running on the Apify platform, or keep the default (memory storage) implementation otherwise. It will also subscribe to the websocket events (or mimic them locally). Actor.exit()
will handle the tear down and calls process.exit()
to ensure our process won't hang indefinitely for some reason.
Events
Apify SDK (v2) exports Apify.events
, which is an EventEmitter
instance. With Crawlee, the events are managed by EventManager
class instead. We can either access it via Actor.eventManager
getter, or use Actor.on
and Actor.off
shortcuts instead.
-Apify.events.on(...);
+Actor.on(...);
We can also get the
EventManager
instance viaConfiguration.getEventManager()
.
In addition to the existing events, we now have an exit
event fired when calling Actor.exit()
(which is called at the end of Actor.main()
). This event allows you to gracefully shut down any resources when Actor.exit
is called.
Smaller/internal breaking changes
Apify.call()
is now just a shortcut for runningApifyClient.actor(actorId).call(input, options)
, while also taking the token inside env vars into accountApify.callTask()
is now just a shortcut for runningApifyClient.task(taskId).call(input, options)
, while also taking the token inside env vars into accountApify.metamorph()
is now just a shortcut for runningApifyClient.task(taskId).metamorph(input, options)
, while also taking the ACTOR_RUN_ID inside env vars into accountApify.waitForRunToFinish()
has been removed, useApifyClient.waitForFinish()
insteadActor.main/init
purges the storage by default- remove
purgeLocalStorage
helper, move purging to the storage class directlyStorageClient
interface now has optionalpurge
method- purging happens automatically via
Actor.init()
(you can opt out viapurge: false
in the options ofinit/main
methods)
QueueOperationInfo.request
is no longer availableRequest.handledAt
is now string date in ISO formatRequest.inProgress
andRequest.reclaimed
are nowSet
s instead of POJOsinjectUnderscore
from puppeteer utils has been removedAPIFY_MEMORY_MBYTES
is no longer taken into account, useCRAWLEE_AVAILABLE_MEMORY_RATIO
instead- some
AutoscaledPool
options are no longer available:cpuSnapshotIntervalSecs
andmemorySnapshotIntervalSecs
has been replaced with top levelsystemInfoIntervalMillis
configurationmaxUsedCpuRatio
has been moved to the top level configuration
ProxyConfiguration.newUrlFunction
can be async..newUrl()
and.newProxyInfo()
now return promises.prepareRequestFunction
andpostResponseFunction
options are removed, use navigation hooks insteadgotoFunction
andgotoTimeoutSecs
are removed- removed compatibility fix for old/broken request queues with null
Request
props fingerprintsOptions
renamed tofingerprintOptions
(fingerprints
->fingerprint
).fingerprintOptions
now acceptuseFingerprintCache
andfingerprintCacheSize
(instead ofuseFingerprintPerProxyCache
andfingerprintPerProxyCacheSize
, which are now no longer available). This is because the cached fingerprints are no longer connected to proxy URLs but to sessions.
2.3.2 (2022-05-05)
- fix: use default user agent for playwright with chrome instead of the default "headless UA"
- fix: always hide webdriver of chrome browsers
2.3.1 (2022-05-03)
- fix:
utils.apifyClient
early instantiation (#1330) - feat:
utils.playwright.injectJQuery()
(#1337) - feat: add
keyValueStore
option toStatistics
class (#1345) - fix: ensure failed req count is correct when using
RequestList
(#1347) - fix: random puppeteer crawler (running in headful mode) failure (#1348)
This should help with the
We either navigate top level or have old version of the navigated frame
bug in puppeteer. - fix: allow returning falsy values in
RequestTransform
's return type
2.3.0 (2022-04-07)
- feat: accept more social media patterns (#1286)
- feat: add multiple click support to
enqueueLinksByClickingElements
(#1295) - feat: instance-scoped "global" configuration (#1315)
- feat: requestList accepts proxyConfiguration for requestsFromUrls (#1317)
- feat: update
playwright
to v1.20.2 - feat: update
puppeteer
to v13.5.2We noticed that with this version of puppeteer actor run could crash with
We either navigate top level or have old version of the navigated frame
error (puppeteer issue here). It should not happen while running the browser in headless mode. In case you need to run the browser in headful mode (headless: false
), we recommend pinning puppeteer version to10.4.0
in actorpackage.json
file. - feat: stealth deprecation (#1314)
- feat: allow passing a stream to KeyValueStore.setRecord (#1325)
- fix: use correct apify-client instance for snapshotting (#1308)
- fix: automatically reset
RequestQueue
state after 5 minutes of inactivity, closes #997 - fix: improve guessing of chrome executable path on windows (#1294)
- fix: prune CPU snapshots locally (#1313)
- fix: improve browser launcher types (#1318)
0 concurrency mitigation
This release should resolve the 0 concurrency bug by automatically resetting the
internal RequestQueue
state after 5 minutes of inactivity.
We now track last activity done on a RequestQueue
instance:
- added new request
- started processing a request (added to
inProgress
cache) - marked request as handled
- reclaimed request
If we don't detect one of those actions in last 5 minutes, and we have some
requests in the inProgress
cache, we try to reset the state. We can override
this limit via CRAWLEE_INTERNAL_TIMEOUT
env var.
This should finally resolve the 0 concurrency bug, as it was always about
stuck requests in the inProgress
cache.
2.2.2 (2022-02-14)
- fix: ensure
request.headers
is set - fix: lower
RequestQueue
API timeout to 30 seconds - improve logging for fetching next request and timeouts
2.2.1 (2022-01-03)
- fix: ignore requests that are no longer in progress (#1258)
- fix: do not use
tryCancel()
from inside sync callback (#1265) - fix: revert to puppeteer 10.x (#1276)
- fix: wait when
body
is not available ininfiniteScroll()
from Puppeteer utils (#1238) - fix: expose logger classes on the
utils.log
instance (#1278)
2.2.0 (2021-12-17)
Proxy per page
Up until now, browser crawlers used the same session (and therefore the same proxy) for
all request from a single browser * now get a new proxy for each session. This means
that with incognito pages, each page will get a new proxy, aligning the behaviour with
CheerioCrawler
.
This feature is not enabled by default. To use it, we need to enable useIncognitoPages
flag under launchContext
:
new Apify.Playwright({
launchContext: {
useIncognitoPages: true,
},
// ...
})
Note that currently there is a performance overhead for using
useIncognitoPages
. Use this flag at your own will.
We are planning to enable this feature by default in SDK v3.0.
Abortable timeouts
Previously when a page function timed out, the task still kept running. This could lead to requests being processed multiple times. In v2.2 we now have abortable timeouts that will cancel the task as early as possible.
Mitigation of zero concurrency issue
Several new timeouts were added to the task function, which should help mitigate the zero concurrency bug. Namely fetching of next request information and reclaiming failed requests back to the queue
are now executed with a timeout with 3 additional retries before the task fails. The timeout is always at least 300s (5 minutes), or requestHandlerTimeoutSecs
if that value is higher.
Full list of changes
- fix
RequestError: URI malformed
in cheerio crawler (#1205) - only provide Cookie header if cookies are present (#1218)
- handle extra cases for
diffCookie
(#1217) - add timeout for task function (#1234)
- implement proxy per page in browser crawlers (#1228)
- add fingerprinting support (#1243)
- implement abortable timeouts (#1245)
- add timeouts with retries to
runTaskFunction()
(#1250) - automatically convert google spreadsheet URLs to CSV exports (#1255)
2.1.0 (2021-10-07)
- automatically convert google docs share urls to csv download ones in request list (#1174)
- use puppeteer emulating scrolls instead of
window.scrollBy
(#1170) - warn if apify proxy is used in proxyUrls (#1173)
- fix
YOUTUBE_REGEX_STRING
being too greedy (#1171) - add
purgeLocalStorage
utility method (#1187) - catch errors inside request interceptors (#1188, #1190)
- add support for cgroups v2 (#1177)
- fix incorrect offset in
fixUrl
function (#1184) - support channel and user links in YouTube regex (#1178)
- fix: allow passing
requestsFromUrl
toRequestListOptions
in TS (#1191) - allow passing
forceCloud
down to the KV store (#1186), closes #752 - merge cookies from session with user provided ones (#1201), closes #1197
- use
ApifyClient
v2 (full rewrite to TS)
2.0.7 (2021-09-08)
- Fix casting of int/bool environment variables (e.g.
APIFY_LOCAL_STORAGE_ENABLE_WAL_MODE
), closes #956 - Fix incognito pages and user data dir (#1145)
- Add
@ts-ignore
comments to imports of optional peer dependencies (#1152) - Use config instance in
sdk.openSessionPool()
(#1154) - Add a breaking callback to
infiniteScroll
(#1140)
2.0.6 (2021-08-27)
- Fix deprecation messages logged from
ProxyConfiguration
andCheerioCrawler
. - Update
got-scraping
to receive multiple improvements.
2.0.5 (2021-08-24)
- Fix error handling in puppeteer crawler
2.0.4 (2021-08-23)
- Use
sessionToken
withgot-scraping
2.0.3 (2021-08-20)
- BREAKING IN EDGE CASES * We removed
forceUrlEncoding
inrequestAsBrowser
because we found out that recent versions of the underlying HTTP clientgot
already encode URLs andforceUrlEncoding
could lead to weird behavior. We think of this as fixing a bug, so we're not bumping the major version. - Limit
handleRequestTimeoutMillis
to max valid value to prevent Node.js fallback to1
. - Use
got-scraping@^3.0.1
- Disable SSL validation on MITM proxie
- Limit
handleRequestTimeoutMillis
to max valid value
2.0.2 (2021-08-12)
- Fix serialization issues in
CheerioCrawler
caused by parser conflicts in recent versions ofcheerio
.
2.0.1 (2021-08-06)
- Use
got-scraping
2.0.1 until fully compatible.
2.0.0 (2021-08-05)
- BREAKING: Require Node.js >=15.10.0 because HTTP2 support on lower Node.js versions is very buggy.
- BREAKING: Bump
cheerio
to1.0.0-rc.10
fromrc.3
. There were breaking changes incheerio
between the versions so this bump might be breaking for you as well. - Remove
LiveViewServer
which was deprecated before release of SDK v1.