Extraction Rules

Customize your response by adding extraction rules.

Extraction rules can be applied with both JavaScript rendering enabled and disabled.

WebScrapingAPI allows you to extract specific sections of the webpage. You can do so by using the extract_rules parameter.

This parameter's value can be a string (the CSS selector or XPath) or a stringified object. In the second case, the parameter accepts the following options:

Parameter	Type	Description
selector Required	string	The CSS selector or the XPath.
selector_type	string	The type of the selector option. Accepted values are css and xpath. The default value is xpath if the selector option starts with /, and css otherwise.
output	string	The output format of the selected element. Accepted values are: - html - returns HTML format - text - (default) returns text format - @[attr] - returns the attribute of the element - table_json - returns the JSON format of a table - table_array - returns the array format of a table - another extract_rules object - used to parse nested elements.
all	int	Returns all possible elements. The default value for this parameter is "1".
clean	int	Removes leading and trailing white spaces, line terminator characters, and newlines from the result. The default value for this parameter is "1".

A full example of how this parameter would look in production is:

extract_rules='{"title": {"selector": "h1", "output": "html"}, "subtitle": {"selector": "p.p-big", "output": "text"}}'

or:

extract_rules='{"title": "h1"}'

Extraction Rules Integration Examples

Extract Content Based on CSS Rules

GET https://api.webscrapingapi.com/v1

The following examples shows how the extraction_rules parameter is used in order to extract specific elements from the targeted website.

Query Parameters

Name	Type	Description
api_key*	String	<YOUR_API_KEY>
url*	String	https://webscrapingapi.com
extract_rules	Object	{"title": {"selector": "h1", "output": "html"}, "subtitle": {"selector": "p.p-big", "output": "text"}}

200: OK Successfully extracted data

{"title":"<h1>The leading REST API for web scraping</h1>","subtitle":"Join 10,000+ businesses that use WebScrapingAPI to gather data at scale.WebScrapingAPI collects the HTML from any web page using a simple API and provides\n            ready-to-process data to everyone in your company.Use one API to collect data, from any website. Integrate with any development language and\n                customize your\n                requests in just 30 seconds."}

400: Bad Request Incorrect `extract_rules` format

{
    "status": "Failure",
    "status_code": 400,
    "created_at": "2022-09-12T12:09:55.157Z",
    "processed_at": null,
    "time_taken": {
        "total": 0.034,
        "scraping": 0
    },
    "error": "Key `extract_rules` must be a stringified object."
}

The full GET request for the extract_rules should be:

https://api.webscrapingapi.com/v1?api_key=<YOUR_API_KEY>&url=https://webscrapingapi.com&extract_rules=%7B%22title%22%3A%20%7B%22selector%22%3A%20%22h1%22%2C%20%22output%22%3A%20%22text%22%7D%2C%20%22subtitle%22%3A%20%7B%22selector%22%3A%20%22p.p-big%22%2C%20%22output%22%3A%20%22text%22%7D%7D

cURL

curl https://api.webscrapingapi.com/v1?api_key=<YOUR_API_KEY>&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwebscrapingapi.com&extract_rules=%7B%22title%22%3A%20%7B%22selector%22%3A%20%22h1%22%2C%20%22output%22%3A%20%22text%22%7D%2C%20%22subtitle%22%3A%20%7B%22selector%22%3A%20%22p.p-big%22%2C%20%22output%22%3A%20%22text%22%7D%7D

NodeJS

const http = require("https");

const options = {
  "method": "GET",
  "hostname": "api.webscrapingapi.com",
  "port": null,
  "path": "/v1?api_key=%7B%7Bapi_key%7D%7D&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwebscrapingapi.com&extract_rules=%7B%22title%22%3A%20%7B%22selector%22%3A%20%22h1%22%2C%20%22output%22%3A%20%22text%22%7D%2C%20%22subtitle%22%3A%20%7B%22selector%22%3A%20%22p.p-big%22%2C%20%22output%22%3A%20%22text%22%7D%7D",
  "headers": {}
};

const req = http.request(options, function (res) {
  const chunks = [];

  res.on("data", function (chunk) {
    chunks.push(chunk);
  });

  res.on("end", function () {
    const body = Buffer.concat(chunks);
    console.log(body.toString());
  });
});

req.end();

Python

import requests

API_KEY = '<YOUR_API_KEY>'
SCRAPER_URL = 'https://api.webscrapingapi.com/v1'

TARGET_URL = 'https://webscrapingapi.com/'

PARAMS = {
    "api_key":API_KEY,
    "url": TARGET_URL,
    "extract_rules":'{"title": {"selector": "h1", "output": "html"}, "subtitle": {"selector": "p.p-big", "output": "text"}}'
}

response = requests.get(SCRAPER_URL, params=PARAMS)

print(response.text)

PHP

<?php

$curl = curl_init();

curl_setopt_array($curl, [
  CURLOPT_URL => "https://api.webscrapingapi.com/v1?api_key=%7B%7Bapi_key%7D%7D&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwebscrapingapi.com&extract_rules=%7B%22title%22%3A%20%7B%22selector%22%3A%20%22h1%22%2C%20%22output%22%3A%20%22text%22%7D%2C%20%22subtitle%22%3A%20%7B%22selector%22%3A%20%22p.p-big%22%2C%20%22output%22%3A%20%22text%22%7D%7D",
  CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
  CURLOPT_ENCODING => "",
  CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 10,
  CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 30,
  CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION => CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1,
  CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => "GET",
]);

$response = curl_exec($curl);
$err = curl_error($curl);

curl_close($curl);

if ($err) {
  echo "cURL Error #:" . $err;
} else {
  echo $response;
}

Go

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"net/http"
	"io/ioutil"
)

func main() {

	url := "https://api.webscrapingapi.com/v1?api_key=%7B%7Bapi_key%7D%7D&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwebscrapingapi.com&extract_rules=%7B%22title%22%3A%20%7B%22selector%22%3A%20%22h1%22%2C%20%22output%22%3A%20%22text%22%7D%2C%20%22subtitle%22%3A%20%7B%22selector%22%3A%20%22p.p-big%22%2C%20%22output%22%3A%20%22text%22%7D%7D"

	req, _ := http.NewRequest("GET", url, nil)

	res, _ := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)

	defer res.Body.Close()
	body, _ := ioutil.ReadAll(res.Body)

	fmt.Println(res)
	fmt.Println(string(body))

}

Java

HttpResponse<String> response = Unirest.get("https://api.webscrapingapi.com/v1?api_key=%7B%7Bapi_key%7D%7D&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwebscrapingapi.com&extract_rules=%7B%22title%22%3A%20%7B%22selector%22%3A%20%22h1%22%2C%20%22output%22%3A%20%22text%22%7D%2C%20%22subtitle%22%3A%20%7B%22selector%22%3A%20%22p.p-big%22%2C%20%22output%22%3A%20%22text%22%7D%7D")
  .asString();

.NET

var client = new RestClient("https://api.webscrapingapi.com/v1?api_key=%7B%7Bapi_key%7D%7D&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwebscrapingapi.com&extract_rules=%7B%22title%22%3A%20%7B%22selector%22%3A%20%22h1%22%2C%20%22output%22%3A%20%22text%22%7D%2C%20%22subtitle%22%3A%20%7B%22selector%22%3A%20%22p.p-big%22%2C%20%22output%22%3A%20%22text%22%7D%7D");
var request = new RestRequest(Method.GET);
IRestResponse response = client.Execute(request);

Ruby

require 'uri'
require 'net/http'
require 'openssl'

url = URI("https://api.webscrapingapi.com/v1?api_key=%7B%7Bapi_key%7D%7D&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwebscrapingapi.com&extract_rules=%7B%22title%22%3A%20%7B%22selector%22%3A%20%22h1%22%2C%20%22output%22%3A%20%22text%22%7D%2C%20%22subtitle%22%3A%20%7B%22selector%22%3A%20%22p.p-big%22%2C%20%22output%22%3A%20%22text%22%7D%7D")

http = Net::HTTP.new(url.host, url.port)
http.use_ssl = true
http.verify_mode = OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_NONE

request = Net::HTTP::Get.new(url)

response = http.request(request)
puts response.read_body

Important! The url & extract_rules parameters have to be encoded. ( i.e. &url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.webscrapingapi.com%2F&extract_rules=%7B%22title%22%3A%20%7B%22selector... )

Response Example

{"title":"The leading REST API for web scraping","subtitle":"Join 10,000+ businesses that use WebScrapingAPI to gather
data at scale.WebScrapingAPI collects the HTML from any web page using a simple API and provides\n ready-to-process data
to everyone in your company.Use one API to collect data, from any website. Integrate with any development language and\n
customize your\n requests in just 30 seconds."}

More extract_rules object examples

Here are more examples that should help you better understand how the object passed to the extract_rules parameter should look like:

HTML Sample	Extraction Rule	Rule Description	JSON Output
<div class="title"> This is my title </div>	{"title": ".title"}	Return the text content of the elements having the CSS class .title	{ "title": [ "This is my title" ] }
<div> <a href="https://www.webscrapingapi.com/product/"> Product </a> <a href="https://www.webscrapingapi.com/pricing/"> Pricing </a> </div>	{ "links": { "selector": "a", "output": "@href", "all": "1" } }	Return the href attribute of all links on page	{ "links": [ "https://www.webscrapingapi.com/product/","https://www.webscrapingapi.com/pricing/" ] }
<div> <img src="https://www.webscrapingapi.com/assets/images/icons/full.svg?v=41d081a6f0" > </div>	{ "image": { "selector": "img", "output": "@src", "all": 0, } }	Return the src attribute of the first image available on page	{ "image": [ "https://www.webscrapingapi.com/assets/images/icons/full.svg?v=41d081a6f0" ] }
<table class="ants"> <thead> <tr> <th>Region</th> <th>No. species</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>Europe</td> <td>180</td> </tr> </tbody> </table>	{ "table": { "selector": ".ants", "output": "table_json", "all": 0 } }	Return the JSON format of the first table having the CSS class .ants	{ "table": [ { "Region: "Europe", "No. species": "180" } ] }
<table class="ants"> <thead> <tr> <th>Region</th> <th>No. species</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>Europe</td> <td>180</td> </tr> </tbody> </table>	{ "table": { "selector": ".ants", "output": "table_array", "all": 0 } }	Return the array format of the first table having the CSS class .ants	{ "table": [ ["Europe", "180"] ] }
<ul> <li> <p class="name">Item1</p> <p class="price">100</p> </li> <li> <p class="name">Item2</p> <p class="price">1000</p> </li> </ul>	{ "items": { "selector": "li", "output": { "name": { "selector": ".name", "all": 0, "price": { "selector": ".price", "all": 0 } }, "all": 1 } }	Return the name and the price of each list item.	{ "items": [ { "name": "Item1", "price": "100" }, { "name": "Item2", "price": "1000" } ] }