GitHub Repository Scraper for Apify

A Python-based Apify actor that scrapes GitHub repository information using requests and BeautifulSoup.

Features

• Extracts repository information including:
  • Full name (owner/repo)
  • Star count
  • Description
  • Primary programming language
  • Topics/tags
  • Last updated time
  • License information
  • Fork count
• Written in Python using requests and BeautifulSoup for reliable scraping
• Built for the Apify platform

Files

• apify_actor.py - The main actor code for Apify deployment
• requests_github_scraper.py - Standalone GitHub scraper (for local testing)
• INPUT_SCHEMA.json - Input schema for the Apify actor
• requirements.txt - Python dependencies
• package.json - Actor metadata for Apify

Local Testing

1. Install dependencies: pip install -r requirements.txt
2. Run the local version: python requests_github_scraper.py
3. Check results in the apify_storage directory

Deploying to Apify

Prerequisites

1. Create an Apify account if you don't have one
2. Install the Apify CLI: npm install -g apify-cli
3. Log in to your Apify account: apify login

Deployment Steps

1. Initialize your project folder (if you haven't already):

   apify init github-scraper
   

2. Modify the Dockerfile to use Python:

   1FROM apify/actor-python:3.9
   2
   3# Copy source code
   4COPY . ./
   5
   6# Install dependencies
   7RUN pip install --no-cache-dir -r requirements.txt
   8
   9# Define how to run the actor
   10CMD ["python3", "apify_actor.py"]
   

3. Push your actor to Apify:

   apify push
   

4. After pushing, your actor will be available in the Apify Console.

Running on Apify

1. Navigate to your actor in the Apify Console
2. Click on "Run" in the top-right corner
3. Enter the GitHub repository URLs you want to scrape in the Input form
4. Click "Run" to start the actor
5. Access the results in the "Dataset" tab once the run is complete

Input Options

• repoUrls (required): Array of GitHub repository URLs to scrape
• sleepBetweenRequests (optional): Delay between requests in seconds (default: 3)

Example Input

1{
2  "repoUrls": [
3    "https://github.com/microsoft/playwright",
4    "https://github.com/facebook/react",
5    "https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow"
6  ],
7  "sleepBetweenRequests": 5
8}

Output Format

The actor provides clean, well-structured data for each GitHub repository in the following format:

1{
2  "url": "https://github.com/microsoft/playwright",
3  "name": "playwright",
4  "owner": "microsoft",
5  "fullName": "microsoft/playwright",
6  "description": "Playwright is a framework for Web Testing and Automation. It allows testing Chromium, Firefox and WebKit with a single API.",
7  "stats": {
8    "stars": "71.2k",
9    "forks": "4k"
10  },
11  "language": "TypeScript",
12  "topics": [
13    "electron",
14    "javascript",
15    "testing",
16    "firefox",
17    "chrome",
18    "automation",
19    "web",
20    "test",
21    "chromium",
22    "test-automation",
23    "testing-tools",
24    "webkit",
25    "end-to-end-testing",
26    "e2e-testing",
27    "playwright"
28  ],
29  "lastUpdated": "2025-03-17T17:00:47Z",
30  "license": "Apache-2.0 license"
31}

Output Fields:

Field	Type	Description
url	String	The full URL of the GitHub repository
name	String	Repository name (without owner)
owner	String	Username or organization that owns the repository
fullName	String	Complete repository identifier (owner/name)
description	String	Repository description
stats.stars	String	Number of stars the repository has
stats.forks	String	Number of forks the repository has
language	String	Primary programming language
topics	Array	List of topics/tags associated with the repository
lastUpdated	String	ISO timestamp of the last update
license	String	Repository license information

This structured output format makes it easy to:

• Display repository cards in your applications
• Create data visualizations
• Filter and sort repositories by various attributes
• Export to other data formats