PAR Scrape

PAR Scrape is a versatile web scraping tool with options for Selenium or Playwright, featuring AI-powered data extraction and formatting.

Screenshots

Features

• Web scraping using Selenium or Playwright
• AI-powered data extraction and formatting
• Supports multiple output formats (JSON, Excel, CSV, Markdown)
• Customizable field extraction
• Token usage and cost estimation

Known Issues

• Selenium silent mode on windows still shows message about websocket. There is no simple way to get rid of this.
• Providers other than OpenAI are hit-and-miss depending on provider / model / data being extracted.

Prerequisites

To install PAR Scrape, make sure you have Python 3.11.

uv is recommended

Linux and Mac

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

Windows

powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -c "irm https://astral.sh/uv/install.ps1 | iex"

Installation

Installation From Source

Then, follow these steps:

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/paulrobello/par_scrape.git
   cd par_scrape

2. Install the package dependencies using uv:

   uv sync

Installation From PyPI

To install PAR Scrape from PyPI, run any of the following commands:

uv tool install par_scrape

pipx install par_scrape

Playwright Installation

To use playwright as a scraper, you must install it and its browsers using the following commands:

uv tool install playwright
playwright install chromium

Usage

To use PAR Scrape, you can run it from the command line with various options. Here's a basic example: Ensure you have the AI provider api key in your environment. The key names for supported providers are as follows:

• OpenAI: OPENAI_API_KEY
• Anthropic: ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
• Groq: GROQ_API_KEY
• Google: GOOGLE_API_KEY
• Ollama: Not needed

You can also store your key in the file ~/.par_scrape.env as follows:

OPENAI_API_KEY=your_api_key
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=your_api_key
GROQ_API_KEY=your_api_key
GOOGLE_API_KEY=your_api_key

Running from source

uv run par_scrape --url "https://openai.com/api/pricing/" --fields "Model" --fields "Pricing Input" --fields "Pricing Output" --scraper selenium --model gpt-4o-mini --display-output md

Running if installed from PyPI

par_scrape --url "https://openai.com/api/pricing/" --fields "Title" "Number of Points" "Creator" "Time Posted" "Number of Comments" --scraper selenium --model gpt-4o-mini --display-output md

Options

• --url, -u: The URL to scrape or path to a local file (default: "https://openai.com/api/pricing/")
• --fields, -f: Fields to extract from the webpage (default: ["Model", "Pricing Input", "Pricing Output"])
• --scraper, -s: Scraper to use: 'selenium' or 'playwright' (default: "playwright")
• --headless, -h: Run in headless mode (for Selenium) (default: False)
• --wait-type, -w: Method to use for page content load waiting [none|pause|sleep|idle|selector|text] (default: sleep).
• --wait-selector, -i: Selector or text to use for page content load waiting.
• --sleep-time, -t: Time to sleep (in seconds) before scrolling and closing browser (default: 5)
• --ai-provider, -a: AI provider to use for processing (default: "OpenAI")
• --model, -m: AI model to use for processing. If not specified, a default model will be used based on the provider.
• --display-output, -d: Display output in terminal (md, csv, or json)
• --output-folder, -o: Specify the location of the output folder (default: "./output")
• --silent, -q: Run in silent mode, suppressing output (default: False)
• --run-name, -n: Specify a name for this run
• --version, -v: Show the version and exit
• --pricing: Enable pricing summary display (default: False)
• --cleanup, -c: How to handle cleanup of output folder (choices: none, before, after, both) (default: none)
• --extraction-prompt, -e: Path to alternate extraction prompt file
• --ai-base-url, -b: Override the base URL for the AI provider.

Examples

1. Basic usage with default options:

par_scrape --url "https://openai.com/api/pricing/" -f "Model" -f "Pricing Input" -f "Pricing Output" --pricing -w text -i gpt-4o

2. Using Playwright and displaying JSON output:

par_scrape --url "https://openai.com/api/pricing/" -f "Title" -f "Description" -f "Price" --scraper playwright -d json --pricing -w text -i gpt-4o

3. Specifying a custom model and output folder:

par_scrape --url "https://openai.com/api/pricing/" -f "Title" -f "Description" -f "Price" --model gpt-4 --output-folder ./custom_output --pricing -w text -i gpt-4o

4. Running in silent mode with a custom run name:

par_scrape --url "https://openai.com/api/pricing/" -f "Title" -f "Description" -f "Price" --silent --run-name my_custom_run --pricing -w text -i gpt-4o

5. Using the cleanup option to remove the output folder after scraping:

par_scrape --url "https://openai.com/api/pricing/" -f "Title" -f "Description" -f "Price" --cleanup --pricing

6. Using the pause option to wait for user input before scrolling:

par_scrape --url "https://openai.com/api/pricing/" -f "Title" -f "Description" -f "Price" --pause --pricing

Whats New

• Version 0.4.6:
  • Minor bug fixes.
  • Updating pricing data.
  • Added support for Amazon Bedrock
  • Removed some unnecessary dependencies.
  • Code cleanup.
• Version 0.4.5:
  • Added new option --wait-type that allows you to specify the type of wait to use such as pause, sleep, idle, text or selector.
  • Removed --pause option as it is no longer needed with --wait-type option.
  • Playwright scraping now honors the headless mode.
  • Playwright is now the default scraper as it is much faster.
• Version 0.4.4:
  • Better Playwright scraping.
• Version 0.4.3:
  • Added option to override the base URL for the AI provider.
• Version 0.4.2:
  • The url parameter can now point to a local rawData_*.md file for easier testing of different models without having to re-fetch the data.
  • Added ability to specify file with extraction prompt.
  • Tweaked extraction prompt to work with Groq and Anthropic. Google still does not work.
  • Remove need for ~/.par-scrape-config.json
• Version 0.4.1:
  • Minor bug fixes for pricing summary.
  • Default model for google changed to "gemini-1.5-pro-exp-0827" which is free and usually works well.
• Version 0.4.0:
  • Added support for Anthropic, Google, Groq, and Ollama. (Not well tested with any providers other than OpenAI)
  • Add flag for displaying pricing summary. Defaults to False.
  • Added pricing data for Anthropic.
  • Better error handling for llm calls.
  • Updated cleanup flag to handle both before and after cleanup. Removed --remove-output-folder flag.
• Version 0.3.1:
  • Add pause and sleep-time options to control the browser and scraping delays.
  • Default headless mode to False so you can interact with the browser.
• Version 0.3.0:
  • Fixed location of config.json file.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Author

Paul Robello - probello@gmail.com