Scrape To Field
This module automatically extracts content from external websites and populates specific Drupal fields. It allows site builders to configure scraping sources, selectors, update frequencies, and data cleaning for individual fields on any content type.
The Scrape To Field module provides web scraping functionality that automatically extracts content from external websites and populates Drupal fields. Good for maintaining up-to-date product prices, news feeds, stock information, or any dynamic content from third-party sources.
This module offers field-level configuration, scheduling, and data modifying capabilities. Site builders can easily configure different scraping sources for individual fields on any node, with each field having its own URL, CSS/XPath selectors, extraction methods, and update frequencies.
Features
- Scrape content from specified URLs and populate multiple Drupal fields
- Configure different scraping frequencies per field
- Field-level custom scraping settings
- Support for various field types
- Queue-based background processing via Drupal's cron system
- Configuration testing to validate selectors and preview results before saving
- Data cleaning with search/replace to transform scraped data before storage
Requirements
Cron must be enabled and running regularly on your Drupal site to process scraping tasks.
Installation
Install as you would normally install a contributed Drupal module.
For further information, see [Installing Drupal Modules](https://www.drupal.org/docs/extending-drupal/installing-modules).
Configuration
Global Settings
Navigate to Administration » Configuration » Content authoring » Scrape to field Settings (`/admin/config/content/web-scraper`) to configure global module settings:
- Request Timeout
- Cron scraping frequency
- Allowed HTML tags
Field-Level Configuration
Configure scraping for individual nodes by visiting the Scraper Config tab on any node page.
For each supported field type (string, text, integer, decimal, float), you can configure:
- Source URL: The webpage URL to scrape data from
- Selector type: Choose between CSS Selector or XPath Expression
- Extract method: How to extract data from the targeted element
- Value cleaning: Enable search and replace operations to clean scraped data
- Multiple results handling: Options for fields that accept multiple values
- Test this configuration: Real-time testing button to validate your scraping configuration and preview results before saving
- Scraping frequency override: Override global frequency setting for this specific field
Permissions
Configure access control under People » Permissions:
- Administer scrape to field settings: Access to global configuration
- Configure any node scrape to field: Configure scraping for any node
- Configure own node scrape to field: Configure scraping only for own authored nodes
Troubleshooting and FAQ
See FAQ.md and TROUBLESHOOTING.md files in root module directory.
Similar modules
- Feeds - Import and aggregate content from various sources. Feeds works on node level, each node has the same source URL and configuration. Scrape to field works on field level, each field on each node can have different source URL and configuration.
- Migrate - A powerful framework for migrating data into Drupal from various sources. Migrate requires custom migration configuration files while Scrape to field uses a GUI for setup.
Scrape to field is uniquely positioned for these scenarios:
- Different fields need different sources and update frequencies
- You need to test configurations before deployment
- Site builders prefer GUI-based configuration without coding
- Background processing without impacting site performance