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https://github.com/osener/wring

Extract content from webpages using CSS Selectors, XPath, and JS expressions
https://github.com/osener/wring

cheerio phantomjs xpath

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Extract content from webpages using CSS Selectors, XPath, and JS expressions

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README 

        
![](resources/media/img1.png)



# ![](resources/media/img2.png) wring



## Installation

You can install wring using [npm](https://www.npmjs.com/package/wring/tutorial):



```sh

$ npm install --global wring

```



Wring utilizes [PhantomJS](http://phantomjs.org/) for some of its commands. To

use these, install it using your system package manager by running something

like `brew install phantomjs` on OS X, or `apt-get install phantomjs` on Ubuntu. You can

make sure it's on your `PATH` by running `phantomjs -v`.



Alternatively, you can install a version which automatically downloads PhantomJS

binaries for your system:



```sh

$ npm install --global wring-with-phantomjs

```



## Usage



#### `wring text`



Here is a simple example which prints contents of the matching element (uses

[Cheerio](https://github.com/cheeriojs/cheerio) under the hood):



```sh

$ wring text 'https://www.google.com/finance/converter?a=1&from=EUR&to=USD' '#currency_converter_result'

1 EUR = 1.0940 USD



# You can use the first letter of command as a shortcut

$ wring t http://randomfunfacts.com i

No president of the United States was an only child.



```



You can also use jQuery specific selectors such as `:contains()`:



```sh

$ wring t 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_songs_recorded_by_Taylor_Swift' 'tr:contains("The Hunger Games") th:first-child'

"Eyes Open"

"Safe & Sound"

```



####  `wring html`



Prints `outerHTML`of matching elements. Here is an example, this time using an

XPath expression:



```sh

$ wring html "http://news.ycombinator.com" "//td[@class='title']/a[starts-with(@href,'http')]"

PostgreSQL Indexes: First principles

Doing Mathematics Differently

The rise of the API-based SaaS

Rich Hickey Fanclub

...

```



####  Accepted inputs



First argument of a command specifies its input, which can be a URL, path to a

file, HTML string, or `-` to read the page source from `stdin`:



```sh

# read from file

$ curl 'http://www.purescript.org/' > page.html

$ wring t page.html '.intro h2'

PureScript is a small strongly typed programming language that compiles to JavaScript.



# read from string

$ wring text '
Hello
' '.foo'

Hello



# read from stdin

$ curl -s 'http://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day' | wring text - '.word-and-pronunciation h1'

keelhaul

```



#### Using with PhantomJS



Prefixing a command with `phantomjs` or `p` will run it using jQuery inside a

real web browser context. You can use this if you are having compatibility

problems with the commands above, but the real utility comes from being able to

scrape dynamically generated content:



```sh

$ wring p t 'Foo document.title = "Bar";' 'title'

Bar



# compare it to the non-phantomjs invocation below

$ wring t 'Foo document.title = "Bar";' 'title'

Foo



```

#### `wring eval`



Lets you evaluate JavaScript inside any page. Calling `wring('str')` will write

to terminal. You can pass any number of .js file paths, URLs, and JS expressions

as script arguments and they will get executed in given order:



```sh

$ wring eval 'http://ipfs.io' 'wring(document.title)'

IPFS is a new peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol.



# you can load and use third party libraries:

$ wring e 'http://ipfs.io' 'http://cdn.jsdelivr.net/lodash/4.5.1/lodash.js' 'wring(_.kebabCase(document.title))'

ipfs-is-a-new-peer-to-peer-hypermedia-protocol

```



#### Self contained scripts



You can also use a trick to make self contained scripts.



Here is a contrived example which loads Hacker News homepage, loads lodash,

sorts posts by their score, and prints the top 5:



```js

#!/bin/sh

":" //; exec wring eval "https://news.ycombinator.com" "https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/lodash/4.5.1/lodash.js" "$0"



var posts = _.map(

  document.querySelectorAll(".votelinks + .title > a"),

  function(el) {

    return el.textContent + "\n" + el.href;

  })



var scores = _.map(

  document.querySelectorAll(".score"),

  function (el) {

    return parseInt(el.textContent, 10);

  })



_(posts)

  .zipWith(scores, function (text, score) {

    return { text: text, score: score };

  })

  .orderBy("score", "desc")

  .take(5)

  .forEach(function (item) {

    wring(item.text + "\n");

  })

```



```sh

# after saving the source above to `wring_hn.js` you can run it like this

$ chmod +x wring_hn.js

$ ./wring_hn.js

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B confirmed, with onboard BT LE and WiFi

https://apps.fcc.gov/oetcf/eas/reports/...



After fifteen years of downtime, the MetaFilter gopher server is back

http://metatalk.metafilter.com/24019/...

...

```



#### `wring shot`



Last command to cover is `wring shot`, which renders a screenshot of first

matching element and saves it to a file:



```sh

$ wring shot 'https://www.google.com/finance?q=GOOG' '#price-panel' goog.png

wring: Saved to goog.png

```

Resulting `goog.png` will contain something like this:



![GOOG](resources/media/goog.png)



## Development

```sh

# Install Node.js dependencies:

$ npm install



# Install PureScript dependencies:

$ bower install



# Build `wring.js` and `phantom-main.js`:

$ npm run build



# Run tests:

$ npm test



# Compile & run using Pulp (https://github.com/bodil/pulp):

$ pulp run text 'foo' 'b'

```



## License



[MIT](https://github.com/osener/wring/blob/master/LICENSE)