How to Use curl_cffi for Web Scraping

What is curl_cffi?

curl_cffi is a Python library that provides efficient, low-level bindings to the libcurl library using CFFI (C Foreign Function Interface). This allows you to perform HTTP requests with high performance and fine-grained control, similar to the curl command-line tool but within Python. It's particularly useful for web scraping tasks that require speed and advanced configurations.

Features:

• High Performance: Leverages the speed of libcurl for fast HTTP requests.
• Thread Safety: Safe to use in multi-threaded applications.
• Advanced Features: Supports proxies, SSL/TLS configurations, custom headers, and more.
• Low-Level Control: Provides detailed control over the request and response process.

Prerequisites

Before you dive into using curl_cffi, ensure you have the following installed:

• Python 3.6 or higher
• libcurl installed on your system
• pip for installing Python packages

On Ubuntu/Debian systems, you might need to install libcurl development headers:

sudo apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev

Getting Started with curl_cffi

Installation

Install curl_cffi using pip:

pip install curl_cffi

Basic Example: Making a GET Request

Here's a basic example of how to use curl_cffi to perform a GET request:

from curl_cffi import requests

# Perform a GET request
response = requests.get('https://httpbin.org/get')

# Check the status code
print(f'Status Code: {response.status_code}')

# Print the response content
print('Response Body:', response.text)

Web Scraping Example: Scraping Quotes from a Website

Let's scrape a webpage to extract information. We'll use Quotes to Scrape to get all the quotes along with their authors.

from curl_cffi import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

# URL to scrape
url = 'http://quotes.toscrape.com/'

# Perform a GET request
response = requests.get(url)

# Parse the HTML content using BeautifulSoup
soup = BeautifulSoup(response.content, 'html.parser')

# Find all quote elements
quotes = soup.find_all('div', class_='quote')

# Extract and display the quotes and authors
for quote in quotes:
    text = quote.find('span', class_='text').get_text()
    author = quote.find('small', class_='author').get_text()
    print(f'{text} — {author}')

Output:

“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” — Albert Einstein
“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” — J.K. Rowling
... (additional quotes)

Handling Captchas with CapSolver and curl_cffi

In this section, we'll explore how to integrate CapSolver with curl_cffi to bypass captchas. CapSolver is an external service that helps in solving various types of captchas, including ReCaptcha V2 and hCaptcha, which are commonly used on websites.

We will demonstrate solving ReCaptcha V2 using CapSolver and then scraping the content of a page that requires solving the captcha first.

Example: Solving ReCaptcha V2 with CapSolver and curl_cffi

import os
import capsolver
from curl_cffi import requests

# Consider using environment variables for sensitive information
capsolver.api_key = os.getenv("CAPSOLVER_API_KEY", "Your CapSolver API Key")
PAGE_URL = os.getenv("PAGE_URL", "https://example.com")  # URL of the page with the captcha
PAGE_KEY = os.getenv("PAGE_SITE_KEY", "SITE_KEY")        # Site key for the captcha

def solve_recaptcha_v2(url, site_key):
    solution = capsolver.solve({
        "type": "ReCaptchaV2TaskProxyless",
        "websiteURL": url,
        "websiteKey": site_key,
        "proxy": PROXY
    })
    return solution['solution']['gRecaptchaResponse']

def main():
    print("Solving reCaptcha V2...")
    captcha_solution = solve_recaptcha_v2(PAGE_URL, PAGE_KEY)
    print("Captcha Solved!")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Note: Replace PAGE_URL with the URL of the page containing the captcha and PAGE_SITE_KEY with the site key of the captcha. You can find the site key in the HTML source of the page, usually within the <div> containing the captcha widget.

Solving hCaptcha with CapSolver

If you need to solve an hCaptcha instead of a ReCaptcha, change the task type in the capsolver.solve() function:

def solve_hcaptcha(url, site_key):
    solution = capsolver.solve({
        "type": "HCaptchaTaskProxyless",
        "websiteURL": url,
        "websiteKey": site_key
    })
    return solution['solution']['gRecaptchaResponse']

Handling Proxies with curl_cffi

If you need to route your requests through a proxy, curl_cffi makes it straightforward:

from curl_cffi import requests

# Define the proxy settings
proxies = {
    'http': 'http://username:password@proxyserver:port',
    'https': 'https://username:password@proxyserver:port',
}

# Perform a GET request using the proxy
response = requests.get('https://httpbin.org/ip', proxies=proxies)

# Print the response content
print('Response Body:', response.text)

Handling Cookies with curl_cffi

You can manage cookies using the CookieJar from Python's http.cookiejar module:

from curl_cffi import requests
from http.cookiejar import CookieJar

# Create a CookieJar instance
cookie_jar = CookieJar()

# Create a session with the cookie jar
session = requests.Session()
session.cookies = cookie_jar

# Perform a GET request
response = session.get('https://httpbin.org/cookies/set?name=value')

# Display the cookies
for cookie in session.cookies:
    print(f'{cookie.name}: {cookie.value}')

Advanced Usage: Custom Headers and POST Requests

You can send custom headers and perform POST requests with curl_cffi:

from curl_cffi import requests

# Define custom headers
headers = {
    'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0 (compatible)',
    'Accept-Language': 'en-US,en;q=0.5',
}

# Data to send in the POST request
data = {
    'username': 'testuser',
    'password': 'testpass',
}

# Perform a POST request
response = requests.post('https://httpbin.org/post', headers=headers, data=data)

# Print the JSON response
print('Response JSON:', response.json())

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Conclusion

With curl_cffi, you can efficiently perform web scraping tasks while having detailed control over your HTTP requests. Integrating it with CapSolver allows you to bypass captchas like ReCaptcha V2 and hCaptcha, enabling access to content that would otherwise be difficult to scrape.

Feel free to expand upon these examples to suit your specific scraping needs. Always remember to respect the terms of service of the websites you scrape and adhere to legal guidelines.

Happy scraping!