First of all, http://www.google.co.uk -> http://www.google.co.uk/search, it might be a reason for a bad response.
To scrape images from Google Images, you need to parse data from the page source (ctrl+u) that is located in the <scrpt> tags. Here are steps you need to take (simplified but very close to actual code below):
- Find all
<script> tags:
soup.select('script')
- Match images data via
regex from the <script> tags:
matched_images_data = ''.join(re.findall(r"AF_initDataCallback\(([^<]+)\);", str(all_script_tags)))
- Match desired images (full res size) via
regex:
matched_images_data_fix = json.dumps(matched_images_data)
matched_images_data_json = json.loads(matched_images_data_fix)
matched_google_full_resolution_images = re.findall(r"(?:'|,),\[\"(https:|http.*?)\",\d+,\d+\]",
matched_images_data_json)
- Extract and decode them using
bytes() and decode():
for fixed_full_res_image in matched_google_full_resolution_images:
original_size_img_not_fixed = bytes(fixed_full_res_image, 'ascii').decode('unicode-escape')
original_size_img = bytes(original_size_img_not_fixed, 'ascii').decode('unicode-escape')
- To save images, you can use
urllib.request.urlretrieve which is probably one of the easiest solutions.
Sometimes it won't download anything because the request was sent via script (bot), and if you want to parse images from Google images or other search engines, you need to pass user-agent first, and then download the image, otherwise, the request will be blocked and it will throw an error.
Pass user-agent to urllib.request and download image:
opener=urllib.request.build_opener()
opener.addheaders=[('User-Agent','Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/70.0.3538.102 Safari/537.36 Edge/18.19582')]
urllib.request.install_opener(opener)
urllib.request.urlretrieve(URL, 'your_folder/image_name.jpg')
Code that scrapes and downloads images locally with an example in the online IDE:
import requests, lxml, re, json, urllib.request
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
headers = {
"User-Agent":
"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/70.0.3538.102 Safari/537.36 Edge/18.19582"
}
params = {
"q": "cat", # query
"tbm": "isch", # image results
"hl": "en", # language
"ijn": "0", # batch of 100 images. "1" is another 100 images and so on.
}
html = requests.get("https://www.google.com/search", params=params, headers=headers)
soup = BeautifulSoup(html.text, 'lxml')
def get_images_data():
print('\nGoogle Images Metadata:')
for google_image in soup.select('.isv-r.PNCib.MSM1fd.BUooTd'):
title = google_image.select_one('.VFACy.kGQAp.sMi44c.lNHeqe.WGvvNb')['title']
source = google_image.select_one('.fxgdke').text
link = google_image.select_one('.VFACy.kGQAp.sMi44c.lNHeqe.WGvvNb')['href']
print(f'{title}\n{source}\n{link}\n')
# this steps could be refactored to a more compact
all_script_tags = soup.select('script')
# # https://regex101.com/r/48UZhY/4
matched_images_data = ''.join(re.findall(r"AF_initDataCallback\(([^<]+)\);", str(all_script_tags)))
# https://kodlogs.com/34776/json-decoder-jsondecodeerror-expecting-property-name-enclosed-in-double-quotes
# if you try to json.loads() without json.dumps() it will throw an error:
# "Expecting property name enclosed in double quotes"
matched_images_data_fix = json.dumps(matched_images_data)
matched_images_data_json = json.loads(matched_images_data_fix)
# https://regex101.com/r/pdZOnW/3
matched_google_image_data = re.findall(r'\[\"GRID_STATE0\",null,\[\[1,\[0,\".*?\",(.*),\"All\",', matched_images_data_json)
# https://regex101.com/r/NnRg27/1
matched_google_images_thumbnails = ', '.join(
re.findall(r'\[\"(https\:\/\/encrypted-tbn0\.gstatic\.com\/images\?.*?)\",\d+,\d+\]',
str(matched_google_image_data))).split(', ')
print('Google Image Thumbnails:') # in order
for fixed_google_image_thumbnail in matched_google_images_thumbnails:
# https://stackoverflow.com/a/4004439/15164646 comment by Frédéric Hamidi
google_image_thumbnail_not_fixed = bytes(fixed_google_image_thumbnail, 'ascii').decode('unicode-escape')
# after first decoding, Unicode characters are still present. After the second iteration, they were decoded.
google_image_thumbnail = bytes(google_image_thumbnail_not_fixed, 'ascii').decode('unicode-escape')
print(google_image_thumbnail)
# removing previously matched thumbnails for easier full resolution image matches.
removed_matched_google_images_thumbnails = re.sub(
r'\[\"(https\:\/\/encrypted-tbn0\.gstatic\.com\/images\?.*?)\",\d+,\d+\]', '', str(matched_google_image_data))
# https://regex101.com/r/fXjfb1/4
# https://stackoverflow.com/a/19821774/15164646
matched_google_full_resolution_images = re.findall(r"(?:'|,),\[\"(https:|http.*?)\",\d+,\d+\]",
removed_matched_google_images_thumbnails)
print('\nFull Resolution Images:') # in order
for index, fixed_full_res_image in enumerate(matched_google_full_resolution_images):
# https://stackoverflow.com/a/4004439/15164646 comment by Frédéric Hamidi
original_size_img_not_fixed = bytes(fixed_full_res_image, 'ascii').decode('unicode-escape')
original_size_img = bytes(original_size_img_not_fixed, 'ascii').decode('unicode-escape')
print(original_size_img)
# ------------------------------------------------
# Download original images
# print(f'Downloading {index} image...')
# opener=urllib.request.build_opener()
# opener.addheaders=[('User-Agent','Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/70.0.3538.102 Safari/537.36 Edge/18.19582')]
# urllib.request.install_opener(opener)
# urllib.request.urlretrieve(original_size_img, f'Bs4_Images/original_size_img_{index}.jpg')
Alternatively, you can achieve the same thing by using Google Images API from SerpApi. It's a paid API with a free plan.
The difference is that you don't have to deal with regex, bypass blocks from Google, and maintain the code over time if something crashes (will be changed in the HTML). Instead, you only need to iterate over structured JSON and get the data you want.
Example code to integrate:
import os, json # json for pretty output
from serpapi import GoogleSearch
def get_google_images():
params = {
"api_key": os.getenv("API_KEY"),
"engine": "google",
"q": "pexels cat",
"tbm": "isch"
}
search = GoogleSearch(params)
results = search.get_dict()
print(json.dumps(results['images_results'], indent=2, ensure_ascii=False))
get_google_images()
---------------
'''
[
... # other images
{
"position": 100, # img number
"thumbnail": "https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRR1FCGhFsr_qZoxPvQBDjVn17e_8bA5PB8mg&usqp=CAU",
"source": "pexels.com",
"title": "Close-up of Cat · Free Stock Photo",
"link": "https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-of-cat-320014/",
"original": "https://images.pexels.com/photos/2612982/pexels-photo-2612982.jpeg?auto=compress&cs=tinysrgb&dpr=1&w=500",
"is_product": false
}
]
'''
P.S - I wrote a more in-depth blog post about how to scrape Google Images, and how to reduce the chance of being blocked while web scraping search engines.
Disclaimer, I work for SerpApi.
