SpiderPig

SpiderPig is a node library used to crawl websites to provide a list or URLs. It also supports logging in to password protected sections

Installation

• npm install @unumux/spiderpig

Usage

1. Import or require the library
   • import Crawler from "@unumux/spiderpig";
   • or const Crawler = require("@unumux/spiderpig");
2. Create a crawler instance, and pass in crawler options

   const crawler = new Crawler({
       url: "http://localhost:3000",
       concurrent: 1,
       delay: 300
   });

3. Listen for crawler events

   crawler.on("passing_link_found", (item) => {
       console.log(item);
   });
   
   crawler.on("finished", () => {
       console.log("Finished!");
   });

4. Start the crawler

   crawler.start();

Crawler Options

The crawler can receive the following options:

• url (required): string or array of strings for the URL. Currently all links that include this in it will be scanned. So if url is http://localhost:3000, http://localhost:3000/test1/subtest1 and http://localhost:3000/test2/subtest2 would be found. If it was set to http://localhost:3000/test1, only http://localhost:3000/test1/subtest1 would be found.
• concurrent (default: 2): Number of concurrent scans (or threads) to run. It's useful to run 2+, as running a single thread can cause the entire scan to hang if the page takes a long time to load. Just don't use so many that it puts unnecesary load on your web server
• delay (default: 300): Delay between requests. This is useful to prevent putting unnecessary load on the webserver
• login (default: false): If the site you're working on requires a login, the following items should be set. This feature may or may not work, depending on your login system. The key values in the form object should map to the name properties of the inputs on the login screen.

login: {
    url: "https://localhost:3000/my-login-url",
    form: {
        username: "testLogin",
        password: "testPassword",
        RememberMe: true
    }
}

• exclude (default: []): Array of exclusion patterns of pages that should not be scanned. These should be RegExp patterns:

exclude: [
    new RegExp(".*\.pdf$"),
    new RegExp(".*\.(mp4|mp3|pptx|doc|docx|ppt|mp3|png|jpg|xls|xlsx|ppsx)$"),
    new RegExp(".*Logout.*"),
]

Crawler Events

The following events are availble on the crawler instance

• queue_updated - fired when an item is added to the queue. Passes the entire queue as an argument
• request_start - fired when an attempt to load a queue item starts. Passes the individual queue item
• passing_link_found - fired when a link in the queue loads. Passes the individual queue item (URL) that passed, and an object containing the entire response (in the format of { response })
• failing_link_found - fired when a link in the queue fails to load. Passes the individual queue item that failed
• finished - fired when the entire queue has been processed