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https://github.com/internetarchive/brozzler

brozzler - distributed browser-based web crawler
https://github.com/internetarchive/brozzler

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brozzler - distributed browser-based web crawler

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README 

        
.. image:: https://api.travis-ci.org/internetarchive/brozzler.svg?branch=master

    :target: https://travis-ci.org/internetarchive/brozzler



.. |logo| image:: https://cdn.rawgit.com/internetarchive/brozzler/1.1b12/brozzler/dashboard/static/brozzler.svg

   :width: 60px



|logo| brozzler

===============

"browser" \| "crawler" = "brozzler"



Brozzler is a distributed web crawler (爬虫) that uses a real browser (Chrome

or Chromium) to fetch pages and embedded URLs and to extract links. It employs

`youtube-dl `_ to enhance media capture

capabilities and `rethinkdb `_ to

manage crawl state.



Brozzler is designed to work in conjunction with warcprox for web archiving.



Requirements

------------



- Python 3.5 or later

- RethinkDB deployment

- Chromium or Google Chrome >= version 64



Note: The browser requires a graphical environment to run. When brozzler is run

on a server, this may require deploying some additional infrastructure,

typically X11. Xvnc4 and Xvfb are X11 variants that are suitable for use on a

server, because they don't display anything to a physical screen. The `vagrant

configuration `_ in the brozzler repository has an example setup

using Xvnc4. (When last tested, chromium on Xvfb did not support screenshots,

so Xvnc4 is preferred at this time.)



Getting Started

---------------



The easiest way to get started with brozzler for web archiving is with

``brozzler-easy``. Brozzler-easy runs brozzler-worker, warcprox, brozzler

wayback, and brozzler-dashboard, configured to work with each other in a single

process.



Mac instructions:



::



    # install and start rethinkdb

    brew install rethinkdb

    # no brew? try rethinkdb's installer: https://www.rethinkdb.com/docs/install/osx/

    rethinkdb &>>rethinkdb.log &



    # install brozzler with special dependencies pywb and warcprox

    pip install brozzler[easy]  # in a virtualenv if desired



    # queue a site to crawl

    brozzler-new-site http://example.com/



    # or a job

    brozzler-new-job job1.yml



    # start brozzler-easy

    brozzler-easy



At this point brozzler-easy will start archiving your site. Results will be

immediately available for playback in pywb at http://localhost:8880/brozzler/.



*Brozzler-easy demonstrates the full brozzler archival crawling workflow, but

does not take advantage of brozzler's distributed nature.*



Installation and Usage

----------------------



To install brozzler only::



    pip install brozzler  # in a virtualenv if desired



Launch one or more workers: [*]_ ::



    brozzler-worker --warcprox-auto



Submit jobs::



    brozzler-new-job myjob.yaml



Submit sites not tied to a job::



    brozzler-new-site --time-limit=600 http://example.com/



.. [*] A note about ``--warcprox-auto``: this option tells brozzler to

   look for a healthy warcprox instance in the `rethinkdb service registry

   `_. For

   this to work you need to have at least one instance of warcprox running,

   with the ``--rethinkdb-services-url`` option pointing to the same rethinkdb

   services table that brozzler is using. Using ``--warcprox-auto`` is

   recommended for clustered deployments.



Job Configuration

-----------------



Brozzler jobs are defined using YAML files. Options may be specified either at

the top-level or on individual seeds. At least one seed URL must be specified,

however everything else is optional. For details, see ``_.



::



    id: myjob

    time_limit: 60 # seconds

    ignore_robots: false

    warcprox_meta: null

    metadata: {}

    seeds:

      - url: http://one.example.org/

      - url: http://two.example.org/

        time_limit: 30

      - url: http://three.example.org/

        time_limit: 10

        ignore_robots: true

        scope:

          surt: http://(org,example,



Brozzler Dashboard

------------------



Brozzler comes with a rudimentary web application for viewing crawl job status.

To install the brozzler with dependencies required to run this app, run



::



    pip install brozzler[dashboard]



To start the app, run



::



    brozzler-dashboard



At this point Brozzler Dashboard will be accessible at http://localhost:8000/.



.. image:: Brozzler-Dashboard.png



See ``brozzler-dashboard --help`` for configuration options.



Brozzler Wayback

----------------



Brozzler comes with a customized version of `pywb

`_, which supports using the rethinkdb

"captures" table (populated by warcprox) as its index.



To use, first install dependencies.



::



    pip install brozzler[easy]



Write a configuration file pywb.yml.



::



    # 'archive_paths' should point to the output directory of warcprox

    archive_paths: warcs/  # pywb will fail without a trailing slash

    collections:

      brozzler:

        index_paths: !!python/object:brozzler.pywb.RethinkCDXSource

          db: brozzler

          table: captures

          servers:

          - localhost

    enable_auto_colls: false

    enable_cdx_api: true

    framed_replay: true

    port: 8880



Run pywb like so:



::



    $ PYWB_CONFIG_FILE=pywb.yml brozzler-wayback



Then browse http://localhost:8880/brozzler/.



.. image:: Brozzler-Wayback.png



Headless Chrome (experimental)

------------------------------



Brozzler is known to work nominally with Chrome/Chromium in headless mode, but

this has not yet been extensively tested.



License

-------



Copyright 2015-2018 Internet Archive



Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may

not use this software except in compliance with the License. You may

obtain a copy of the License at



::



    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0



Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software

distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,

WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.

See the License for the specific language governing permissions and

limitations under the License.