ScrapflyScrapeWebsiteTool

Description

The ScrapflyScrapeWebsiteTool is designed to leverage Scrapfly’s web scraping API to extract content from websites. This tool provides advanced web scraping capabilities with headless browser support, proxies, and anti-bot bypass features. It allows for extracting web page data in various formats, including raw HTML, markdown, and plain text, making it ideal for a wide range of web scraping tasks.

Installation

To use this tool, you need to install the Scrapfly SDK:

uv add scrapfly-sdk

You’ll also need to obtain a Scrapfly API key by registering at scrapfly.io/register.

Steps to Get Started

To effectively use the ScrapflyScrapeWebsiteTool, follow these steps:

  1. Install Dependencies: Install the Scrapfly SDK using the command above.
  2. Obtain API Key: Register at Scrapfly to get your API key.
  3. Initialize the Tool: Create an instance of the tool with your API key.
  4. Configure Scraping Parameters: Customize the scraping parameters based on your needs.

Example

The following example demonstrates how to use the ScrapflyScrapeWebsiteTool to extract content from a website:

Code
from crewai import Agent, Task, Crew
from crewai_tools import ScrapflyScrapeWebsiteTool

# Initialize the tool
scrape_tool = ScrapflyScrapeWebsiteTool(api_key="your_scrapfly_api_key")

# Define an agent that uses the tool
web_scraper_agent = Agent(
    role="Web Scraper",
    goal="Extract information from websites",
    backstory="An expert in web scraping who can extract content from any website.",
    tools=[scrape_tool],
    verbose=True,
)

# Example task to extract content from a website
scrape_task = Task(
    description="Extract the main content from the product page at https://web-scraping.dev/products and summarize the available products.",
    expected_output="A summary of the products available on the website.",
    agent=web_scraper_agent,
)

# Create and run the crew
crew = Crew(agents=[web_scraper_agent], tasks=[scrape_task])
result = crew.kickoff()

You can also customize the scraping parameters:

Code
# Example with custom scraping parameters
web_scraper_agent = Agent(
    role="Web Scraper",
    goal="Extract information from websites with custom parameters",
    backstory="An expert in web scraping who can extract content from any website.",
    tools=[scrape_tool],
    verbose=True,
)

# The agent will use the tool with parameters like:
# url="https://web-scraping.dev/products"
# scrape_format="markdown"
# ignore_scrape_failures=True
# scrape_config={
#     "asp": True,  # Bypass scraping blocking solutions, like Cloudflare
#     "render_js": True,  # Enable JavaScript rendering with a cloud headless browser
#     "proxy_pool": "public_residential_pool",  # Select a proxy pool
#     "country": "us",  # Select a proxy location
#     "auto_scroll": True,  # Auto scroll the page
# }

scrape_task = Task(
    description="Extract the main content from the product page at https://web-scraping.dev/products using advanced scraping options including JavaScript rendering and proxy settings.",
    expected_output="A detailed summary of the products with all available information.",
    agent=web_scraper_agent,
)

Parameters

The ScrapflyScrapeWebsiteTool accepts the following parameters:

Initialization Parameters

  • api_key: Required. Your Scrapfly API key.

Run Parameters

  • url: Required. The URL of the website to scrape.
  • scrape_format: Optional. The format in which to extract the web page content. Options are “raw” (HTML), “markdown”, or “text”. Default is “markdown”.
  • scrape_config: Optional. A dictionary containing additional Scrapfly scraping configuration options.
  • ignore_scrape_failures: Optional. Whether to ignore failures during scraping. If set to True, the tool will return None instead of raising an exception when scraping fails.

Scrapfly Configuration Options

The scrape_config parameter allows you to customize the scraping behavior with the following options:

  • asp: Enable anti-scraping protection bypass.
  • render_js: Enable JavaScript rendering with a cloud headless browser.
  • proxy_pool: Select a proxy pool (e.g., “public_residential_pool”, “datacenter”).
  • country: Select a proxy location (e.g., “us”, “uk”).
  • auto_scroll: Automatically scroll the page to load lazy-loaded content.
  • js: Execute custom JavaScript code by the headless browser.

For a complete list of configuration options, refer to the Scrapfly API documentation.

Usage

When using the ScrapflyScrapeWebsiteTool with an agent, the agent will need to provide the URL of the website to scrape and can optionally specify the format and additional configuration options:

Code
# Example of using the tool with an agent
web_scraper_agent = Agent(
    role="Web Scraper",
    goal="Extract information from websites",
    backstory="An expert in web scraping who can extract content from any website.",
    tools=[scrape_tool],
    verbose=True,
)

# Create a task for the agent
scrape_task = Task(
    description="Extract the main content from example.com in markdown format.",
    expected_output="The main content of example.com in markdown format.",
    agent=web_scraper_agent,
)

# Run the task
crew = Crew(agents=[web_scraper_agent], tasks=[scrape_task])
result = crew.kickoff()

For more advanced usage with custom configuration:

Code
# Create a task with more specific instructions
advanced_scrape_task = Task(
    description="""
    Extract content from example.com with the following requirements:
    - Convert the content to plain text format
    - Enable JavaScript rendering
    - Use a US-based proxy
    - Handle any scraping failures gracefully
    """,
    expected_output="The extracted content from example.com",
    agent=web_scraper_agent,
)

Error Handling

By default, the ScrapflyScrapeWebsiteTool will raise an exception if scraping fails. Agents can be instructed to handle failures gracefully by specifying the ignore_scrape_failures parameter:

Code
# Create a task that instructs the agent to handle errors
error_handling_task = Task(
    description="""
    Extract content from a potentially problematic website and make sure to handle any 
    scraping failures gracefully by setting ignore_scrape_failures to True.
    """,
    expected_output="Either the extracted content or a graceful error message",
    agent=web_scraper_agent,
)

Implementation Details

The ScrapflyScrapeWebsiteTool uses the Scrapfly SDK to interact with the Scrapfly API:

Code
class ScrapflyScrapeWebsiteTool(BaseTool):
    name: str = "Scrapfly web scraping API tool"
    description: str = (
        "Scrape a webpage url using Scrapfly and return its content as markdown or text"
    )
    
    # Implementation details...
    
    def _run(
        self,
        url: str,
        scrape_format: str = "markdown",
        scrape_config: Optional[Dict[str, Any]] = None,
        ignore_scrape_failures: Optional[bool] = None,
    ):
        from scrapfly import ScrapeApiResponse, ScrapeConfig

        scrape_config = scrape_config if scrape_config is not None else {}
        try:
            response: ScrapeApiResponse = self.scrapfly.scrape(
                ScrapeConfig(url, format=scrape_format, **scrape_config)
            )
            return response.scrape_result["content"]
        except Exception as e:
            if ignore_scrape_failures:
                logger.error(f"Error fetching data from {url}, exception: {e}")
                return None
            else:
                raise e

Conclusion

The ScrapflyScrapeWebsiteTool provides a powerful way to extract content from websites using Scrapfly’s advanced web scraping capabilities. With features like headless browser support, proxies, and anti-bot bypass, it can handle complex websites and extract content in various formats. This tool is particularly useful for data extraction, content monitoring, and research tasks where reliable web scraping is required.