kijiji-scraper

A lightweight node.js module for retrieving and scraping ads from Kijiji.

Features

• Retrieve single ads as JavaScript objects given their URL
• Retrieve the latest ads matching given search criteria

Dependencies

• node.js - evented I/O for the backend
• cheerio - jQuery-like API for the server
• node-fetch - Fetch API implementation for Node.Js

Installation

npm install kijiji-scraper

Documentation

Quick start: Use Ad.Get() to scrape an ad given its URL. Use search() to scrape many ads given a set of search parameters. Read on (or CTRL+F) for more detailed information. Documentation can also be found in the TSDoc comments in this module's TypeScript type definition files (.d.ts files).

Ad class

This class encapsulates a Kijiji ad and its properties. It also handles retrieving this information from Kijiji.

Properties

Property	Type	Description
title	String	Title of the ad
description	String	Ad description
date	Date	Date the ad was posted
image	String	URL of the ad's primary image
images	String[]	Array of URLs of the ad's images
attributes	Object	Properties specific to the category of the scraped ad
url	String	The ad's url
id	String	Unique identifier of the ad

The image URL given in image is the featured image for the ad. The image URLs given in images are all of the images associated with the ad.

Note: If the ad has not been scraped automatically, some of these properties may be null or empty. This happens when an Ad object is created manually using the constructor or by performing a search with the scrapeResultDetails option set to false. See the Ad.isScraped() and Ad.scrape() method documentation below for more information on this.

Methods

Ad.Get(url[, options, callback])

Will scrape the Kijiji ad at url and construct an Ad object containing its information.

Arguments

• url - A Kijiji ad URL
• options (optional) - Options to pass to the scraper. See Scraper Options for details
• callback(err, ad) (optional) - A callback called after the ad has been scraped. If an error occurs during scraping, err will not be null. If everything is successful, ad will contain an Ad object

Return value

Returns a Promise which resolves to an Ad object containing the ad's information.

Example usage

const kijiji = require("kijiji-scraper");

// Scrape using returned promise
kijiji.Ad.Get("<Kijiji ad URL>").then(ad => {
    // Use the ad object
    console.log(ad.title);
}).catch(console.error);

// Scrape using optional callback paramater
kijiji.Ad.Get("<Kijiji ad URL>", {}, (err, ad) => {
    if (!err) {
        // Use the ad object
        console.log(ad.title);
    }
});

Ad(url[, info, scraped])

Ad constructor. Manually constructs an ad object. You should generally not need to use this save for a few special cases (e.g., storing ad URLs entered by a user for delayed scraping). Ad.isScraped() returns false for Ad objects constructed in this way unless scraped is passed as true or they are subsequently scraped by calling Ad.scrape(), which causes the scraper to replace the ad's information with what is found at its URL.

Arguments

• url - Ad's URL
• info (optional) - Object containing the ad's properties. Only keys in the properties table (above) may be specified. May be omitted (if not specified then images will be an empty array, attributes will be an empty object, and all other properties will be null)
• scraped (optional) - If true, causes Ad.IsScraped() to return true regardless of whether or not Ad.scrape() has been called

Example usage

const kijiji = require("kijiji-scraper");

const ad = kijiji.Ad("<Kijiji ad URL>", { date: new Date() });
console.log(ad.isScraped()); // false
console.log(ad.date); // current date

ad.scrape().then(() => {
    // Use the ad object
    console.log(ad.date); // date ad was posted (initial value is overwritten)
}).catch(console.error);

Ad.isScraped()

Determines whether or not the ad's information has been retrieved from Kijiji.

Return value

Returns a boolean indicating whether or not an ad's information has been scraped from the page at its URL. This can be false if the Ad object was manually created using the constructor or if it was retrieved from a search with the scrapeResultDetails option set to false. Call Ad.scrape() to retrieve the information for such ads.

Example usage

const kijiji = require("kijiji-scraper");

const ad = kijiji.Ad("<Kijiji ad URL>");  // ad does not get scraped
console.log(ad.isScraped()); // false

ad.scrape().then(() => {
    console.log(ad.isScraped()); // true
}).catch(console.error);

Ad.scrape([options, callback])

Manually retrieves an Ad's information from its URL. Useful if it was created in a way that does not do this automatically, such as using the constructor or performing a search with the scrapeResultDetails option set to false.

Arguments

• options (optional) - Options to pass to the scraper. See Scraper Options for details
• callback(err) (optional) - A callback called after the ad has been scraped. If an error occurs during scraping, err will not be null

Return value

Returns a Promise which resolves once the ad has been scraped and the object has been updated.

Example usage

const kijiji = require("kijiji-scraper");

const ad = kijiji.Ad("<Kijiji ad URL>");  // ad does not get scraped
console.log(ad.isScraped()); // false

// Scrape using returned promise
ad.scrape().then(() => {
    // Use the ad object
    console.log(ad.isScraped()); // true
    console.log(ad.title);
}).catch(console.error);

// Scrape using optional callback paramater
ad.scrape({}, err => {
    if (!err) {
        // Use the ad object
        console.log(ad.isScraped()); // true
        console.log(ad.title);
    }
});

Ad.toString()

Returns a string representation of the ad. This is just meant to be a summary and may omit information for brevity or change format in the future. Access the Ad's properties directly if you need them for comparisons, etc. The current format is as follows:

[MM/dd/yyyy @ hh:mm] TITLE
URL
* property1: value1
* property2: value2
...
* propertyN: valueN

The date, title, and properties will be absent if the ad has not been scraped (isScraped() == false) unless they were manually specified when the object was constructed.

Example usage

const kijiji = require("kijiji-scraper");

kijiji.Ad.Get("<Kijiji ad URL>").then(ad => {
    console.log(ad.toString());
}).catch(console.error);

---

Searching for ads

Searches are performed using the search() function:

search(params[, options, callback])

Arguments

• params - Object containing Kijiji ad search parameters.

  • Mandatory parameters:

    Parameter	Type	Default Value	Description
    locationId	Integer/Object	0 (all of Canada)	Id of the geographical location to search in
    categoryId	Integer/Object	0 (all categories)	Id of the ad category to search in

    Values for locationId and categoryId can be found by performing a search on the Kijiji website and examining the URL that Kijiji redirects to. For example, after setting the location to Ottawa and selecting the "cars & vehicles" category, Kijiji redirects to http://www.kijiji.ca/b-cars-vehicles/ottawa/c27l1700185. The last part of the URL (c27l1700185) is formatted as c[categoryId]l[locationId]. So in this case, categoryId is 27 and locationId is 1700185.

    Location and category objects

    For convenience, objects containing all locationId and categoryId values Kijiji accepts have been defined in locations.ts and categories.ts, respectively. These objects are nested in the same way as those in the location and category selectors on the Kijiji website (e.g., the city of Montreal is located under "Quebec > Greater Montreal > City of Montreal"; coffee tables are located under "Buy and Sell > Furniture > Coffee Tables"), so their contents should be familiar.

    For example, instead of setting locationId to 1700281 (Montreal) and categoryId to 241 (coffee tables), you can set locationId to locations.QUEBEC.GREATER_MONTREAL.CITY_OF_MONTREAL and categoryId to categories.BUY_AND_SELL.FURNITURE.COFFEE_TABLES. You no longer need to know the ids, and you have a quick reference available. Any location/category object along the hierarchy will also work (e.g., locations.QUEBEC for all of Quebec, not just Montreal; categories.BUY_AND_SELL.FURNITURE for all furniture, not just coffee tables). The root objects themselves specify all locations/categories (id of 0). Location/category objects and locationIds/categoryIds are interchangeable - the search function will behave identically in either case. See locations.ts and categories.ts for all location and category objects.

  • Optional parameters: There are many different search parameters. Some of these can be used in any search (i.e., minPrice), but most are category-specific. Additionally, some parameters are specific to which scraperType is being used (see Scraper Options for details on how to switch).

    • Some known parameters available when using either the "html" (default) or "api" (currently broken) scraperType:

      Parameter	Type	Description
      minPrice	Number	Minimum price of returned items
      maxPrice	Number	Maximum price of returned items
      adType	String	Type of ad ("OFFER", "WANTED", or undefined - for both). If using the "api" scraperType then "OFFERED" must be used instead of "OFFER".

    • Some known parameters available when using the "api" (currently broken) scraperType:

      Parameter	Type	Description
      q	String	Search string
      sortType	String	Search results ordering (e.g., "DATE_DESCENDING", "DISTANCE_ASCENDING", "PRICE_ASCENDING", "PRICE_DESCENDING")
      distance	Number	Distance in kilometers
      priceType	String	Type of price (e.g., "SPECIFIED_AMOUNT", "PLEASE_CONTACT", "FREE", "SWAP_TRADE")

    • Some known parameters available when using the "html" (default) scraperType:

      Parameters to use with the scraperType="html" can be easily found by using your browser's developer tools and performing a custom search on the Kijiji website. After submitting your search on Kijiji or updating the filter being applied, use your browser's network monitoring tool to examine the request for https://www.kijiji.ca/b-search.html. Any parameter used in the query string for this request is able to be specified in params. A few examples include:

      Parameter	Type	Description
      keywords	String	Search string
      sortByName	String	Search results ordering (e.g., "dateDesc", "dateAsc", "priceDesc", "priceAsc")

• options (optional) - Contains parameters that control the behavior of searching and scraping. Can be omitted. In addition to the options below, you can also specify everything in Scraper Options.

  Option	Type	Default Value	Description
  pageDelayMs	Integer	1000	Amount of time in milliseconds to wait between scraping each result page. This is useful to avoid detection and bans from Kijiji.
  minResults	Integer	20	Minimum number of ads to fetch (if available). Note that Kijiji results are returned in pages of up to 20 ads, so if you set this to something like 29, up to 40 results may be retrieved. A negative value indicates no limit (retrieve as many ads as possible). If negative or not specified and maxResults > 0, minResults will take on the value of maxResults.
  maxResults	Integer	-1	Maximum number of ads to return. This simply removes excess results from the array that is returned (i.e., if minResults is 40 and maxResults is 7, 40 results will be fetched from Kijiji and the last 33 will be discarded). A negative value indicates no limit. If greater than zero and minResults is unspecified, or if minResults is negative, this value will also be used for minResults.
  scrapeResultDetails	Boolean	true	When using the HTML scraper, the details of each query result are scraped in separate, subsequent requests by default. To suppress this behavior and return only the data retrieved by the initial query, set this option to false. Note that ads will lack some information if you do this and Ad.isScraped() will return false until Ad.scrape() is called to retrieve the missing information. This option does nothing when using the API scraper (default).
  resultDetailsDelayMs	Integer	500	When scrapeResultDetails is true, the amount of time in milliseconds to wait in between each request for result details. A value of 0 will cause all such requests to be made at the same time. This is useful to avoid detection and bans from Kijiji.

• callback(err, results) (optional) - A callback called after the search results have been scraped. If an error occurs during scraping, err will not be null. If everything is successful, results will contain an array of Ad objects.

Return value

Returns a Promise which resolves to an array of search result Ad objects.

Note: Ads may not appear in search results (or the Kijiji website, for that matter) for a short time after they are created (usually no more than 1 minute). This means that when searching, you are not guaranteed to receive extremely recent ads. Such ads will be returned in future searches but their date property will reflect the time that they were actually created.

Example usage

const kijiji = require("kijiji-scraper");

const options = {
    minResults: 20
};

const params = {
    locationId: 1700185,  // Same as kijiji.locations.ONTARIO.OTTAWA_GATINEAU_AREA.OTTAWA
    categoryId: 27,  // Same as kijiji.categories.CARS_AND_VEHICLES
    sortByName: "priceAsc"  // Show the cheapest listings first
};

// Scrape using returned promise
kijiji.search(params, options).then(ads => {
    // Use the ads array
    for (let i = 0; i < ads.length; ++i) {
        console.log(ads[i].title);
    }
}).catch(console.error);

// Scrape using optional callback parameter
function callback(err, ads) {
    if (!err) {
        // Use the ads array
        for (let i = 0; i < ads.length; ++i) {
            console.log(ads[i].title);
        }
    }
}
kijiji.search(params, options, callback);

---

Scraper options

Functions that involve retrieving data from Kijiji (Ad.Get(), Ad.scrape(), and search()) take an optional parameter for scraper options. The options are as follows:

Option	Type	Default	Description
scraperType	String	"api"	How to scrape Kijiji. "html" to scrape the website (default) and "api" to use the mobile API (currently broken). If you have trouble with one, try the other. It seems that the mobile API doesn't have a rate limit or lockout mechanism (yet; please don't abuse this).