A batteries-included Ruby framework for easy web-scraping with built-in debug mode and rate limiting.
Upton is a Ruby framework that simplifies web-scraping by automating repetitive tasks like fetching pages, managing pagination, and implementing rate limiting. It allows developers to write scrapers quickly by focusing only on the unique extraction logic for each site, using CSS selectors or XPath expressions.
Ruby developers and data journalists who need to scrape websites efficiently without writing boilerplate code for HTTP requests, debugging, or pagination handling.
Developers choose Upton because it provides a batteries-included approach with built-in debug mode to avoid hammering servers, configurable rate limiting, and pre-built utilities for common scraping patterns, reducing development time.
A batteries-included framework for easy web-scraping. Just add CSS! (Or do more.)
Open-Awesome is built by the community, for the community. Submit a project, suggest an awesome list, or help improve the catalog on GitHub.
Stashes HTML responses locally to avoid repeated server requests during development, allowing for offline testing and faster iteration, as highlighted in the README's description of get_page with stash parameter.
Automatically sleeps between requests (default 30 seconds) to reduce server load, configurable via @sleep_time_between_requests, helping respect target site policies without extra code.
Handles paginated index pages with configurable query parameters and page limits, simplifying multi-page scraping for sites like search results, as shown in the examples with @paginated settings.
Includes list and table helper functions for scraping common HTML structures, reducing boilerplate code for simple sites, demonstrated in the Utils module examples.
The README explicitly states Upton is alpha software with an unstable API that may change, making it risky for long-term or production projects without frequent updates.
Relies on Nokogiri for HTML parsing, so it cannot handle JavaScript-rendered content without external tools, which is a common limitation for static scraping frameworks.
Tightly integrated with Ruby and gems like RestClient, limiting its use in polyglot teams or environments where other languages are preferred for scraping.