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1 change: 1 addition & 0 deletions docs/01_introduction/quick-start.mdx
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -105,4 +105,5 @@ To see how you can integrate the Apify SDK with popular web scraping libraries,
- [Selenium](../guides/selenium)
- [Crawlee](../guides/crawlee)
- [Scrapy](../guides/scrapy)
- [Scrapling](../guides/scrapling)
- [Running webserver](../guides/running-webserver)
96 changes: 96 additions & 0 deletions docs/03_guides/07_scrapling.mdx
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---
id: scrapling
title: Adaptive scraping with Scrapling
description: Build an Apify Actor that scrapes web pages using the Scrapling adaptive web scraping library.
---

import CodeBlock from '@theme/CodeBlock';
import RunnableCodeBlock from '@site/src/components/RunnableCodeBlock';

import ScraplingExample from '!!raw-loader!roa-loader!./code/07_scrapling.py';
import ScraplingBrowserScraper from '!!raw-loader!./code/07_scrapling_browser.py';

In this guide, you'll learn how to use the [Scrapling](https://scrapling.readthedocs.io/) library for adaptive web scraping in your Apify Actors.

## Introduction

[Scrapling](https://scrapling.readthedocs.io/) is an adaptive web scraping library for Python that combines fetching and parsing behind a single, high-level API. It can fetch a page with fast HTTP requests or with a real browser, parse the result with familiar CSS selectors and XPath, and even relocate your selectors automatically when a website's structure changes.

Some of the features that make Scrapling a good fit for Apify Actors:

- **Multiple fetchers** - A single API exposes a fast HTTP client with browser TLS-fingerprint impersonation, as well as full browser automation for JavaScript-heavy or protected pages.
- **Adaptive selectors** - Scrapling can remember the elements you scraped and find them again after a website redesign, so your scrapers keep working with fewer manual fixes.
- **Anti-bot evasion** - Built-in stealth features (browser impersonation, realistic headers, and automatic Cloudflare Turnstile solving with the browser fetchers) help you avoid being blocked.
- **Familiar parsing API** - Elements are selected with CSS selectors (including the `::text` and `::attr()` pseudo-elements) or XPath, with a Scrapy/Parsel-like `.get()` and `.getall()` interface.
- **First-class async support** - Every fetcher has an asynchronous variant, which integrates naturally with the asyncio-based Apify SDK.

Scrapling's parser works on its own, while the fetchers are an optional extra. Install Scrapling with the `fetchers` extra to get the HTTP and browser fetchers:

```bash
pip install "scrapling[fetchers]"
```

## Choosing a fetcher

All of Scrapling's fetchers are importable from `scrapling.fetchers`. Pick the one that matches the website you're scraping:

- **`Fetcher` / `AsyncFetcher`** - Plain HTTP requests via `.get()`, `.post()`, `.put()`, and `.delete()`. Fast and lightweight, with optional browser TLS-fingerprint impersonation (`impersonate`) and realistic headers (`stealthy_headers`). This is the best choice for static pages and APIs, and it needs no browser binaries.
- **`DynamicFetcher` / `DynamicSession`** - Full browser automation based on [Playwright](https://playwright.dev/), for pages that require JavaScript rendering or interaction. Fetch a page with `.fetch()` or its async variant `.async_fetch()`.
- **`StealthyFetcher` / `StealthySession`** - A stealth-hardened browser fetcher that can automatically solve Cloudflare Turnstile challenges (`solve_cloudflare=True`). Use it for the most heavily protected websites.

The returned `Response` object is also a Scrapling selector, so you can call `.css()`, `.xpath()`, `.find_all()`, and the other parsing methods on it directly.

The HTTP fetchers work with just the `scrapling[fetchers]` extra. The browser-based fetchers (`DynamicFetcher` and `StealthyFetcher`) additionally need browser binaries, which you download with the `scrapling install` command - see [Running browser-based fetchers](#running-browser-based-fetchers) below.

The example Actor in this guide uses the HTTP `AsyncFetcher`, which is the simplest to deploy and pairs well with Apify Proxy.

## Example Actor

The following Actor recursively scrapes data from linked pages on the same site, up to a user-defined maximum depth, starting from the URLs in the Actor input. It uses Scrapling's `AsyncFetcher` to fetch each page through [Apify Proxy](https://docs.apify.com/platform/proxy), and CSS selectors to extract the title, headings, and links.

The whole Actor fits in a single file. A `scrape_page` helper holds the Scrapling-specific fetching and parsing, while the `main` coroutine handles the [Actor](https://docs.apify.com/platform/actors) lifecycle, reads the input, sets up [Apify Proxy](https://docs.apify.com/platform/proxy) and the [request queue](https://docs.apify.com/platform/storage/request-queue), and drives the crawl:

<RunnableCodeBlock className="language-python" language="python">
{ScraplingExample}
</RunnableCodeBlock>

A few things worth pointing out:

- Keeping the fetching and parsing in `scrape_page` separates the Scrapling-specific code from the Actor's orchestration logic. The function returns the extracted data together with the discovered links, so `main` decides what to store and what to enqueue.
- The response of `AsyncFetcher.get` is a Scrapling selector, so `response.css('title::text').get()` reads the page title and `response.css('a::attr(href)').getall()` returns every link's `href` in one call.
- `response.urljoin(link_href)` resolves relative links against the page URL, so you can enqueue them directly.
- The `impersonate='chrome'` and `stealthy_headers=True` options make the request look like it comes from a real Chrome browser, which - combined with Apify Proxy - reduces the chance of being blocked.

## Using Apify Proxy

Running on the Apify platform gives your scraper access to [Apify Proxy](https://docs.apify.com/platform/proxy), which rotates IP addresses to avoid rate limiting and blocking. In the example above, `main` creates a proxy configuration with `Actor.create_proxy_configuration` and passes a fresh proxy URL to `scrape_page` for every request, which forwards it to Scrapling's `proxy` argument.

Scrapling accepts the proxy as a URL string (for example `http://user:pass@proxy.apify.com:8000`), which is exactly what `ProxyConfiguration.new_url` returns. To select specific proxy groups or a country, pass the relevant arguments to `Actor.create_proxy_configuration`. For more details, see the [Proxy management](../concepts/proxy-management) guide. The browser-based fetchers accept the same `proxy` argument.

## Running browser-based fetchers

`DynamicFetcher` and `StealthyFetcher` drive a real browser, so they need the browser binaries installed with the `scrapling install` command. Locally, run it once after installing the `scrapling[fetchers]` extra:

```bash
scrapling install
```

Switching the example Actor from HTTP to a real browser takes only one code change - swap the `AsyncFetcher.get` call in `scrape_page` for `DynamicFetcher.async_fetch`. The parsing API is identical, so the rest of the Actor stays exactly the same:

<CodeBlock className="language-python">
{ScraplingBrowserScraper}
</CodeBlock>

To run this on the Apify platform, build on top of the [Apify Playwright base image](https://hub.docker.com/r/apify/actor-python-playwright), which already ships a browser together with all of its system-level dependencies, and run `scrapling install` during the Docker build to download the browser binaries that Scrapling expects.
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We can add a simple Dockerfile example here.


## Conclusion

In this guide, you learned how to use Scrapling in your Apify Actors. You can now fetch pages with Scrapling's HTTP or browser-based fetchers, extract data with its CSS and XPath selectors, route requests through Apify Proxy, and run the whole thing on the Apify platform. See the [Actor templates](https://apify.com/templates/categories/python) to get started with your own scraping tasks. If you have questions or need assistance, feel free to reach out on our [GitHub](https://github.com/apify/apify-sdk-python) or join our [Discord community](https://discord.com/invite/jyEM2PRvMU). Happy scraping!

## Additional resources

- [Scrapling: Official documentation](https://scrapling.readthedocs.io/)
- [Scrapling: Fetchers](https://scrapling.readthedocs.io/en/latest/fetching/choosing/)
- [Scrapling: Parsing and selecting elements](https://scrapling.readthedocs.io/en/latest/parsing/selection/)
- [Scrapling: GitHub repository](https://github.com/D4Vinci/Scrapling)
- [Apify: Proxy management](https://docs.apify.com/platform/proxy)
122 changes: 122 additions & 0 deletions docs/03_guides/code/07_scrapling.py
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import asyncio
from typing import Any
from urllib.parse import urlsplit

from scrapling.fetchers import AsyncFetcher

from apify import Actor, Request
from apify.storages import RequestQueue


async def scrape_page(
url: str,
*,
proxy_url: str | None = None,
) -> tuple[dict[str, Any], list[str]]:
"""Fetch a page with Scrapling's HTTP fetcher and return data and links."""
# `impersonate` and `stealthy_headers` make the request look like Chrome.
response = await AsyncFetcher.get(
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The guide is titled 'Adaptive Scraping with Scrapling'. Should we use the 'adaptive=True' mode in the example? 🙂

https://scrapling.readthedocs.io/en/latest/parsing/adaptive.html

url,
proxy=proxy_url,
impersonate='chrome',
stealthy_headers=True,
timeout=60,
)

data = {
'url': url,
'title': response.css('title::text').get(),
'h1s': response.css('h1::text').getall(),
'h2s': response.css('h2::text').getall(),
'h3s': response.css('h3::text').getall(),
}

# Keep only absolute links on the same host.
links: list[str] = []
host = urlsplit(url).netloc
for href in response.css('a::attr(href)').getall():
link_url = response.urljoin(href)
if not link_url.startswith(('http://', 'https://')):
continue
if urlsplit(link_url).netloc == host:
links.append(link_url)

return data, links


async def enqueue_links(
request_queue: RequestQueue,
links: list[str],
*,
depth: int,
max_depth: int,
) -> None:
"""Enqueue the links one level deeper, unless max_depth was reached."""
if depth >= max_depth:
return

for link_url in links:
Actor.log.info(f'Enqueuing {link_url} ...')
request = Request.from_url(link_url)
request.crawl_depth = depth + 1
await request_queue.add_request(request)


async def main() -> None:
async with Actor:
# Read the Actor input.
actor_input = await Actor.get_input() or {}
start_urls = actor_input.get('startUrls', [{'url': 'https://crawlee.dev'}])
max_depth = actor_input.get('maxDepth', 1)

if not start_urls:
Actor.log.info('No start URLs specified in Actor input, exiting...')
await Actor.exit()

# Set up Apify Proxy and the request queue.
proxy_configuration = await Actor.create_proxy_configuration()
request_queue = await Actor.open_request_queue()

# Enqueue the start URLs (crawl depth defaults to 0).
for start_url in start_urls:
url = start_url.get('url')
Actor.log.info(f'Enqueuing start URL: {url}')
await request_queue.add_request(Request.from_url(url))

# Cap the crawl; raise or remove to follow more pages.
max_requests = 50
handled_requests = 0

while handled_requests < max_requests and (
request := await request_queue.fetch_next_request()
):
handled_requests += 1
url = request.url
depth = request.crawl_depth
Actor.log.info(f'Scraping {url} (depth={depth}) ...')

try:
# Fresh proxy URL per request (None if no proxy).
proxy_url = None
if proxy_configuration:
proxy_url = await proxy_configuration.new_url()

data, links = await scrape_page(url, proxy_url=proxy_url)
await Actor.push_data(data)
Actor.log.info(
f'Stored data from {url} '
f'(title={data["title"]!r}, {len(links)} links found).'
)
await enqueue_links(
request_queue, links, depth=depth, max_depth=max_depth
)

except Exception:
Actor.log.exception(f'Cannot extract data from {url}.')

finally:
await request_queue.mark_request_as_handled(request)


if __name__ == '__main__':
asyncio.run(main())
35 changes: 35 additions & 0 deletions docs/03_guides/code/07_scrapling_browser.py
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from typing import Any

from scrapling.fetchers import DynamicFetcher


async def scrape_page(
url: str,
*,
proxy_url: str | None = None,
) -> tuple[dict[str, Any], list[str]]:
"""Fetch a page in a real browser with Scrapling and return data and links."""
# `network_idle` waits until the page stops making network requests.
response = await DynamicFetcher.async_fetch(
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How does this work internally? Does the browser open, send a request, and then close? If so, it looks like an overhead for a guide example.

url,
proxy=proxy_url,
headless=True,
network_idle=True,
)

data = {
'url': url,
'title': response.css('title::text').get(),
'h1s': response.css('h1::text').getall(),
'h2s': response.css('h2::text').getall(),
'h3s': response.css('h3::text').getall(),
}

# Collect absolute links from the page.
links: list[str] = []
for href in response.css('a::attr(href)').getall():
link_url = response.urljoin(href)
if link_url.startswith(('http://', 'https://')):
links.append(link_url)

return data, links
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