recordsearch-data-scraper 0.1.0
Tool for extracting machine-readable data from the National Archives of Australia online database, Recordsearch.
License: MIT License
Requires Python: >=3.8
Keywords: nbdev jupyter notebook python

RecordSearch Data Scraper
================

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The National Archives of Australia’s online database, RecordSearch,
contains lots of rich, historical data. Unfortunately there’s no API, so
we have to resort to screen scrapers to get it out in reusable form.
This is a library of scrapers to extract data about the main entities in
RecordSearch – Items, Series, and Agencies – from both individual
records, and search results.

The main classes are:

- `RSItem()` – an individual item
- `RSItemSearch()` – an advanced search for items
- `RSSeries()` – an individual series
- `RSSeriesSearch()` – an advanced search for series
- `RSAgency()` – an individual agency
- `RSAgencySearch()` – an advanced search for agencies

RecordSearch makes use of an odd assortment of sessions, redirects, and
hidden forms, which make scraping a challenge. Please let me know if
something isn’t working as expected, as problems can be difficult to pin
down!

This is a replacement for the original Recordsearch_tools library. The
main changes are:

- Requirements have been updated (dropping RoboBrowser which seems to be
  no longer maintained)
- The full range of search parameters are now supported for Items,
  Series, and Agencies
- There’s a built-in cache for improved efficiency and speed

See the
[documentation](https://wragge.github.io/recordsearch_data_scraper/) for
more details. And check out the [RecordSearch
section](https://glam-workbench.net/recordsearch/) of the GLAM Workbench
for examples of what’s possible.

## Install

`pip install recordsearch-data-scraper`

## How to use

Retrieve an item using its Item ID.

``` python
from recordsearch_data_scraper.scrapers import *

item = RSItem('3445411')
```

View the item data.

``` python
item.data
```

    {'title': 'WRAGGE Clement Lionel Egerton : SERN 647 : POB Cheadle England : POE Enoggera QLD : NOK  (Father) WRAGGE Clement Lindley',
     'identifier': '3445411',
     'series': 'B2455',
     'control_symbol': 'WRAGGE C L E',
     'digitised_status': True,
     'digitised_pages': 47,
     'access_status': 'Open',
     'access_decision_reasons': [],
     'location': 'Canberra',
     'retrieved': '2021-04-25T21:12:22.620414+10:00',
     'contents_date_str': '1914 - 1920',
     'contents_start_date': '1914',
     'contents_end_date': '1920',
     'access_decision_date_str': '12 Apr 2001',
     'access_decision_date': '2001-04-12'}

Search for items.

``` python
search = RSItemSearch(kw='wragge')
```

View the total number of items in the results set.

``` python
search.total_results
```

    209

Access the first page of results.

``` python
items = search.get_results()
```

View the first result.

``` python
items['results'][0]
```

    {'series': 'A2479',
     'control_symbol': '17/1306',
     'title': 'The Wragge Estate. Property for sale.',
     'identifier': '149309',
     'access_status': 'Open',
     'location': 'Canberra',
     'contents_date_str': '1917 - 1917',
     'contents_start_date': '1917',
     'contents_end_date': '1917',
     'digitised_status': True}

The Series and Agency classes follow exactly the same pattern. See the
[docs](https://wragge.github.io/recordsearch_data_scraper/) for more
examples.