crawl dynamic webpage for data using scrapy

javascript, python, scrapy, web-crawler

Solution

In this example, Javascript only allows content to be sent, received and displayed on the webpage without actually reloading the webpage for each request. So you don't need to parse the javascript, you just have to find what information is requested, then imitate that request, and parse the response. For that, you can use Firebug in Firefox, or the developper tools in Chrome (ctrl+shift+J in windows, cmd+opt+J in Mac). In Chrome, just click on the "Network" tab, and you will see requests and responses as you click in the website.

In this particular example, when you want to get the stats for the cleveland team for "2008-09", the javascript sends multiple requests. The request for lineups, which you are probably interested in, is this one: http://stats.nba.com/stats/teamdashlineups?PlusMinus=N&pageNo=1&GroupQuantity=5&TeamID=1610612739&GameID=&Location=&SeasonType=Regular+Season&Season=2008-09&PaceAdjust=N&DateFrom=&sortOrder=DES&VsConference=&OpponentTeamID=0&DateTo=&GameSegment=&LastNGames=0&VsDivision=&LeagueID=00&Outcome=&GameScope=&MeasureType=Base&PerMode=Per48&sortField=MIN&SeasonSegment=&Period=0&Rank=N&Month=0&rowsPerPage=100

Here's an example of scrapy base spider. You just need to define the LineupItem, and then you can execute it with `scrapy crawl stats -o output.json`.

import json
from scrapy.spider import Spider
from scrapy.http import Request
from nba.items import LineupItem
from urllib import urlencode


class StatsSpider(Spider):
    name = "stats"
    allowed_domains = ["stats.nba.com"]
    start_urls = (
        'http://stats.nba.com/',
        )

    def parse(self, response):
        return self.get_lineup('1610612739','2008-09')

    def get_lineup(self, team_id, season):
        params = {
            'Season':         season,
            'SeasonType':     'Regular Season',
            'LeagueID':       '00',
            'TeamID':         team_id,
            'MeasureType':    'Base',
            'PerMode':        'Per48',
            'PlusMinus':      'N',
            'PaceAdjust':     'N',
            'Rank':           'N',
            'Outcome':        '',
            'Location':       '',
            'Month':          '0',
            'SeasonSegment':  '',
            'DateFrom':       '',
            'DateTo':         '',
            'OpponentTeamID': '0',
            'VsConference':   '',
            'VsDivision':     '',
            'GameSegment':    '',
            'Period':         '0',
            'LastNGames':     '0',
            'GroupQuantity':  '5',
            'GameScope':      '',
            'GameID':         '',
            'pageNo':         '1',
            'rowsPerPage':    '100',
            'sortField':      'MIN',
            'sortOrder':      'DES'
        }
        return Request(
            url="http://stats.nba.com/stats/teamdashlineups?" + urlencode(params),
            dont_filter=True,
            callback=self.parse_lineup
        )

    def parse_lineup(self,response):
        data = json.loads(response.body)
        for lineup in data['resultSets'][1]['rowSet']:
            item = LineupItem()
            item['group_set'] = lineup[0]
            item['group_id'] = lineup[1]
            item['group_name'] = lineup[2]
            item['gp'] = lineup[3]
            item['w'] = lineup[4]
            item['l'] = lineup[5]
            item['w_pct'] = lineup[6]
            item['min'] = lineup[7]
            item['fgm'] = lineup[8]
            item['fga'] = lineup[9]
            item['fg_pct'] = lineup[10]
            item['fg3m'] = lineup[11]
            item['fg3a'] = lineup[12]
            item['fg3_pct'] = lineup[13]
            item['ftm'] = lineup[14]
            item['fta'] = lineup[15]
            item['ft_pct'] = lineup[16]
            item['oreb'] = lineup[17]
            item['dreb'] = lineup[18]
            item['reb'] = lineup[19]
            item['ast'] = lineup[20]
            item['tov'] = lineup[21]
            item['stl'] = lineup[22]
            item['blk'] = lineup[23]
            item['blka'] = lineup[24]
            item['pf'] = lineup[25]
            item['pfd'] = lineup[26]
            item['pts'] = lineup[27]
            item['plus_minus'] = lineup[28]
            yield item

which will result in json records such as this one:

{"gp": 30, "fg_pct": 0.491, "group_name": "Ilgauskas,Zydrunas - James,LeBron - Wallace,Ben - West,Delonte - Williams,Mo", "group_set": "Lineups", "w_pct": 0.833, "pts": 103.0, "min": 484.9866666666667, "tov": 13.3, "fta": 21.6, "pf": 16.0, "blk": 7.7, "reb": 44.2, "blka": 3.0, "ftm": 16.6, "ft_pct": 0.771, "fg3a": 18.7, "pfd": 17.2, "ast": 23.3, "fg3m": 7.4, "fgm": 39.5, "fg3_pct": 0.397, "dreb": 32.0, "fga": 80.4, "plus_minus": 18.4, "stl": 8.3, "l": 5, "oreb": 12.3, "w": 25, "group_id": "980 - 2544 - 1112 - 2753 - 2590"}

Problem

Original source