PicScout

PicScout is an NPM module that allows you to search for images using various search engines, currently included ones are Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo.

Installation

To install the package, use the following command:

npm install picscout

Usage

Here's an example of how to use the package in your code:

const PicScout = require('picscout').default;

(async () => {
  const res = await PicScout.search('cats');
  console.log(res);
})();

Output:

[
    {
        "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Juvenile_Ragdoll.jpg",
        "width": 3336,
        "height": 3000
    },
    {
        "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Cat_August_2010-4.jpg",
        "width": 3640,
        "height": 2226
    },
    {
        "url": "https://cdn.britannica.com/39/7139-050-A88818BB/Himalayan-chocolate-point.jpg",
        "width": 930,
        "height": 620
    }
]

Note: The returned URLs are not guaranteed to work 100% of the time, some of the URLs might be broken.

Additional Options

The search method of PicScout supports additional options for more control over the search behavior.

Search Engine Option

You can specify the search engine to be used by passing the engine option with the desired value, such as 'google', 'bing' or 'duckduckgo':

const PicScout = require('picscout').default;

(async () => {
  const res = await PicScout.search('cats', { engine: 'bing' });
  console.log(res);
})();

In the above example, the search will be performed using the Bing search engine. The default engine is 'google'.

Safe Search Option

To enable safe search mode and filter out explicit content from the search results, you can pass the safe option as true:

const PicScout = require('picscout').default;

(async () => {
  const res = await PicScout.search('cats', { safe: true });
  console.log(res);
})();

In the above example, the search results will only include images considered safe for all audiences.

Additional Query Parameters Option

You can also include additional query parameters in the search request by using the additionalQueryParams option. It accepts a URLSearchParams instance:

const PicScout = require('picscout').default;

(async () => {
  const additionalParams = new URLSearchParams();
  additionalParams.set('testparam', 'test');

  // Will call: http://images.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=cats&testparam=test
  const res = await PicScout.search('cats', {
    additionalQueryParams: additionalParams,
  });
  console.log(res);
})();

In the above example, the search request will include an additional query parameter testparam with the value 'test'. You can customize the additional query parameters as needed.

Global Parameters

The PicScout instance allows you to define some of the parameters globally, which will be used as defaults for the search method. However, if you specify a parameter in the method call, it will take precedence over the global value. Here are the available global parameters:

• userAgent (if not defined, a random one will be generated for each call)
• safe (default: false)
• engine (default: 'google')

For example, to set the global safe parameter to true and the engine parameter to 'bing', you can do the following:

const PicScout = require('picscout').default;

PicScout.safe = true;
PicScout.engine = 'bing';

(async () => {
  const res = await PicScout.search('cats');
  console.log(res);
})();

In the above example, the search will be performed with safe search enabled and using the Bing search engine. If you pass a different value for any of these parameters in the method call, it will override the global setting.

Acknowledgments

This package started off based on the g-i-s package by Jim Kang. Please check it out as well.