EMBARGOED TILL 31 MAY 2022

Indiegogo Scraper and CSV generator

• Author - Camille Chin Rui Bin

Scraper for a very specific and niche project for ████████ ███████████ ██████
Scrapes the public api every 10 minutes and saves the json. Converts the json into csv for further analysis

Config files are left empty to leave out sensitive details
Empty templates provided in place

Usage

scraper.py - Runs the basic scraper

Was not originally made to run on a server or as a service
Default interval is 600 seconds (10 minutes)
Not built with cron / service in mind

convert_to_csv.py - Converts the json files in dump to 3 csv files for analysis

usage: scraper.py [-h] [-r] [-at START_AT START_AT] [-nf]

Scrape Indiegogo's community projects trending top 36

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -r, --run             run continously
  -at START_AT START_AT, --start-at START_AT START_AT
                        time to start at in the format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM
  -nf, --no-file        Dont write response to file, mainly for testing

PS C:\Users\████████\indiegogo-scraper>  python .\scraper.py -at 2021-12-30 22:07          
PID: 1234
start time: 2021-12-30 22:04:00

sleeping  0 days   9 seconds 2021-12-30 22:06:51 PID 1234
2021-12-30 22:07:54.42108
2021-12-30 2207
sleeping 581 seconds PID 1234 [^C]
Programme have stopped

CSV Output Format

rankings_snapshots.csv

timestamp, camp1id, camp2id, camp3id . . .

campaign_snapshots.csv

"timestamp", "project_id", "rank", "rank delta", "funds_raised_amount", "funds raised delta", "dollar per rank raised", "funds_raised_percent", "currency", "days left", "is_indemand", "is_pre_launch",

campaign_details.csv

"project_id", "title(s)", "top 6 count", "rank / amt delta list", "average dollar per rank raised", "tagline(s)", "cetegory", "tags", "currency", "open_date", "close_date", "clickthrough_url", "is_indemand", "is_prelaunch", "comments"

Azure infra set up

Specific to ████████ ███████████ ██████'s use case.

In this case it sets up a very basic VM in Korea Central. ARM template provided

No config management or fancy Ansible / provisioning stuff as its out of the scope of this project

Az CLI in Powershell

Set-Variable RG NAME_OF_RG

az group create `
  --name $RG `
  --location "koreacentral"


az deployment group create `
  --name ScraperDeployment `
  --resource-group $RG `
  --template-file azure-template.json `
  --parameters azure-parameters.json

Quick start on a Linux VM

# Set timezone
$ sudo timedatectl set-timezone Region/Timezone

# Run in tmux shell
$ tmux

# Mkdir dumps directory
$ mkdir dumps

$ python .\scraper.py -r 

$ nohup python /path/to/test.py &