quget - web snippets from the command-line

Introduction

quget brings together the power of request, cheerio, and jQuery-like CSS selectors to the command-line.

$ quget http://news.ycombinator.com ".title > a" --limit 3
Best things and stuff of 2015
When coding style survives compilation: De-anonymizing programmers from binaries
Postgres features and tips

$ quget http://www.google.com/search?q=the+price+of+gold "td._dmh < tr|yellow"
Gold Price Per Ounce$1,075.20$3.90
Gold Price Per Gram$34.57$0.13
Gold Price Per Kilo$34,568.46$125.39

$ quget https://github.com/trending?since=monthly ".repo-list-name|pack" --limit 5
apple / swift
FreeCodeCamp / FreeCodeCamp
MaximAbramchuck / awesome-interviews
oneuijs / You-Dont-Need-jQuery
phanan / koel

Installation

npm install -g quget

Usage

  Usage: quget [command] [options] <url> [selector] | -

  Example: quget http://news.ycombinator.com ".title > a|bold|red" --limit 5

  Options:                                                                                                         
    -o, --outfile <file>                 file to output to (default: stdout)                                       
    -q, --quite                          quite the logging                                                         
    -T, --template <template>            template "node: {{name}}, text {{.|text}}"                                
    -l, --limit <count>                  limit query to count matches (-count from bottom) (default: 0)            
    -r, --rand                           select randomly from matched set (can be combined with --limit)           
    -j, --json                           full results object as (pretty) JSON                                      
    -c, --compact                        when used with --json, outputs compact format                             
    -n, --line-number                    add line numbers to output                                                
    - , --stdin                          read <url>(s) from STDIN                                                  
    --sep <seperator>                    seperator for multiple matches (default: "\n")                            
    --request-options <request-options>  options for "request" as relaxed JSON, "{foo: bar}"                       
    -h, --help                           output usage information                                                  
    -V, --version                        output the version number                                                 

Commands:                                                                                              
   samples [N]                          show samples, or run sample N                                   
   help [what]                          get extra help with: pipes, selector, request-options           

Selectors

quget supports all CSS3, some CSS4 and custom jQuery selectors like :contains(). For complete list see css-selelct, or run quget help selector.

If no selector is given, the complete HTML of the page is returned.

Attributes

In general quget returns the text() of the matched nodes. To select an attribute, add the x-ray-like @ to the selector (before the pipes!).

• selector@<attr-name> - get an attribute by name, e.g., selector@href
• selector@text - get text content of matched nodes recursively (default)
• selector@html - get the innerHTML

Multiple attributes are supported: selector@id@class.

Filters / Pipes

quget supports Markup.js-type pipes separated by |, for example, selector|upcase, selector|pack|tease 7. For complete list see Markup.js' built-in pipes.

Need some emphasis or color? All chalk.styles are available as pipes as well: e.g. selector|red, selector|bold|bgBlue.

Additional pipes are defined in (src/pipes/basic.js):

• |after text - add text after each match
• |before text - add text before each match
• |quote text - add text before and after each match
• |tag name - enclose match in <name> and </name>
• |incr N - increment the match value by N (default 1)
• |decr N - decrement the match value by N (default 1)
• |regex (foo.*) - match by regex
• |colorize - apply random chalk style to every line

Use \n to add a new line, e.g. selector|after \n\n. For complete list, run quget help pipes.

Shell pipe

quget can be forced to read from STDIN, either interactively or in a shell pipe, by providing the single dash option -. In this mode, each line of input is read as a url and executed in order. Each line may also contain its own selector. If none is given, the selector from the CLI is used.

$ quget http://news.ycombinator.com ".title > a@href" -l 3 | quget - "title|pack"
Page not found | Docker Blog
Permission to Fail - Michelle Wetzler of Keen IO
The Amazon Whisperer

Examples

For other examples, run quget samples. (Note: samples are run using Node's child_process.exec() which gobbles colors in output streams. To see the colors, run the command directly from the shell.)

Run samples interactively

$ quget samples
Choose a sample to run:
1. Hacker News titles
2. Hacker News titles and subtext
3. Wikipedia's On This Day
4. GitHub trending
5. Markup filters
6. Cheerio selectors
7. Beijing Air Twitter feed
8. Custom template 1
9. Custom template 2
10. Jeopardy!
>

Run a sample

$ quget samples 1
Running:
quget http://news.ycombinator.com ".title > a" -l 7 -n
 Hacker News titles

1. Dear Architects: Sound Matters
2. Best things and stuff of 2015
3. Spotify Hit with $150M Class Action Over Unpaid Royalties
4. Dolphin Smalltalk Goes Open-Source
5. Starters and Maintainers
6. Postgres features and tips
7. When coding style survives compilation: De-anonymizing programmers from binaries

Simple

$ quget http://www.google.com/search?q=the+price+of+gold "td._dmh < tr" --limit 1
Gold Price Per Ounce$1,075.20$3.90

With JSON output

$ quget http://www.google.com/search?q=the+price+of+gold "td._dmh < tr" --limit 1 --json
[
  {
    "type": "tag",
    "name": "tr",
    "attribs": {},
    "children": [
      {
        "type": "tag",
        "name": "td",
        "attribs": {
          "class": "_dmh"
        },
        "children": [
          {
            "data": "Gold Price Per Ounce",
            "type": "text"
          }
        ]
      },
      {
        "type": "tag",
        "name": "td",
        "attribs": {
          "class": "_dmh"
        },
        "children": [
          {
            "data": "$1,075.20",
            "type": "text"
          }
        ]
      },
      {
        "type": "tag",
        "name": "td",
        "attribs": {
          "class": "_dmh"
        },
        "children": [
          {
            "data": "$3.90",
            "type": "text"
          }
        ]
      }
    ],
    "selectorIndex": 0
  }
]

With JSON compact

$ quget http://www.google.com/search?q=the+price+of+gold "td._dmh < tr" --limit 1 --json --compact
[{"type":"tag","name":"tr","attribs":{},"children":[{"type":"tag","name":"td","attribs":{"class":"_dmh"},"children":[{"data"
:"Gold Price Per Ounce","type":"text"}]},{"type":"tag","name":"td","attribs":{"class":"_dmh"},"children":[{"data":"$1,075.20
","type":"text"}]},{"type":"tag","name":"td","attribs":{"class":"_dmh"},"children":[{"data":"$3.90","type":"text"}]}],"selec
torIndex":0}]

With line numbers

$ quget http://www.google.com/search?q=the+price+of+gold "td._dmh < tr" -n
1. Gold Price Per Ounce$1,075.20$3.90
2. Gold Price Per Gram$34.57$0.13
3. Gold Price Per Kilo$34,568.46$125.39

Select at random

$ quget "https://www.reddit.com/r/oneliners/top/?sort=top&t=year" "a.title|colorize" --limit 3 --rand
Ever since I've installed Adblock, all the single girls in my area seem to have lost interest
My poor knowledge of Greek mythology has always been my Achilles' elbow.
Jokes about socialism aren't funny unless you share them with everyone.

Custom template

$ quget http://www.google.com/search?q=the+price+of+gold "td._dmh < tr|yellow"  -T "#{{index|incr}} {{ty
pe|upcase}} {{name}} has {{children.length}} children: {{.|text}}"
#1 TAG tr has 3 children: Gold Price Per Ounce$1,075.20$3.90
#2 TAG tr has 3 children: Gold Price Per Gram$34.57$0.13
#3 TAG tr has 3 children: Gold Price Per Kilo$34,568.46$125.39

See Markup.js for template help.

Custom HTTP headers

Any options for request can be entered in a relaxed jsonic format using --request-options.

$ quget https://api.github.com/users/moos
Request forbidden by administrative rules. Please make sure your request has a User-Agent header (http://developer.github.com/v3/#user-agent-required). Check https://developer.github.com for other possible causes.

$ quget https://api.github.com/users/moos  --request-options "headers:{\"User-Agent\":foo}"
{"login":"moos","id":233047,"avatar_url":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/233047?v=3", [snip]

Define an alias

$ alias def='function _blah(){ quget https://www.bing.com/search?q=define+$@ "#b_results ol:first-child|bold"; };_blah'
$ def foo
  a term used as a universal substitute for something real, especially when discussing technological ideas and problems

Package note

quget relies on a fork of css-select which supplies the matched selector index in the list of matched elements. Since css-select is a dependency of cheerio, it ues npm shrinkwrap to load the fork. Any updates to cheerio will require manually updating the shrinkwrap json file. Hopefully with upcoming npm 3's flat dependency tree, this shebang can be eliminated.

Change log

• 0.4.1 - Add |tag foo pipe.
• 0.4.0 - Add --outfile and --quite options
• 0.3.3 - Update cheerio to 0.22.0 compatible with lodash 4.17
• 0.3.2 - Use moos/cheerio to pick up moos/css-select.
• 0.3.1 - Add npm-shrinkwrap.json back in as it's needed to pick up the right css-select for cheerio
• 0.3.0 - Fix reading multiple URLs from STDIN
• 0.2.4 - Early version

License

(The MIT License)