qsel - web snippets from the command-line

Introduction

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

$ qsel 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

$ qsel 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

$ qsel 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 qsel

Usage

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

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

  Options:                                                                                                         
    -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
    --request-options <request-options>  options for "request" as relaxed JSON, "{foo: bar}"                       
    -h, --help                           output usage information                                                  
    -V, --version                        output the version number                                                 

Batch processing options:
    - , --stdin                          read <url>(s) from STDIN                                                  
    -o, --outfile <file>                 file to output to (default: stdout)                                       
    -q, --quite                          quite the logging                                                         
    -p, --pause <seconds>                pause between batch requests (default: 0.0 secs)
    --sep <seperator>                    seperator for multiple matches (default: "\n")                            
    --tag <tag>                          enclose complete result in <tag></tag>

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

Selectors

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

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

Attributes

In general qsel 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

qsel 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 qsel help pipes.

Shell pipe

qsel 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.

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

Examples

For other examples, run qsel 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

$ qsel 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

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

 1. Apple, Google ban location tracking in apps using their contact-tracing system
 2. Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help
 3. Stealing your SMS messages with iOS 0day
 4. Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)
 5. I gave away my books and sales increased
 6. Iloveyou
 7. Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage Now Has S3 Compatible APIs

Simple

$ qsel 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

$ qsel 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

$ qsel 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

$ qsel 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

$ qsel "https://www.reddit.com/r/oneliners/top/?sort=top&t=year" "a.title|colorize" --limit 3 --rand
"DO NOT TOUCH" must be one of the most terrifying things to read in braille.
I can't believe no one has managed to come up with a cure for anorexia yet, honestly, I thought it'd be a piece of.
Gravity is one of the most fundamental forces in the universe, but if you remove it, you get gravy.

Custom template

$ qsel 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.

$ qsel 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.

$ qsel 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(){ qsel 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

qsel 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

• 0.7.1 - Add better logging for batch ops.
• 0.7.0 - Add --tag option. Write results out incrementally in batch ops.
• 0.6.0 - Add ---pause option for batch operations
• 0.5.0 - Renamed package to qsel (query selector)
• 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)