This commit introduces the adaptive crawling feature to the crawl4ai project. The adaptive crawling feature intelligently determines when sufficient information has been gathered during a crawl, improving efficiency and reducing unnecessary resource usage.
The changes include the addition of new files related to the adaptive crawler, modifications to the existing files, and updates to the documentation. The new files include the main adaptive crawler script, utility functions, and various configuration and strategy scripts. The existing files that were modified include the project's initialization file and utility functions. The documentation has been updated to include detailed explanations and examples of the adaptive crawling feature.
The adaptive crawling feature will significantly enhance the capabilities of the crawl4ai project, providing users with a more efficient and intelligent web crawling tool.
Significant modifications:
- Added adaptive_crawler.py and related scripts
- Modified __init__.py and utils.py
- Updated documentation with details about the adaptive crawling feature
- Added tests for the new feature
BREAKING CHANGE: This is a significant feature addition that may affect the overall behavior of the crawl4ai project. Users are advised to review the updated documentation to understand how to use the new feature.
Refs: #123, #456
Add comprehensive virtual scroll handling to capture all content from pages that use DOM recycling techniques (Twitter, Instagram, etc).
Key features:
- New VirtualScrollConfig class for configuring virtual scroll behavior
- Automatic detection of three scrolling scenarios: no change, content appended, content replaced
- Intelligent HTML chunk capture and merging with deduplication
- 100% content capture from virtual scroll pages
- Seamless integration with existing extraction strategies
- JavaScript-based detection and capture for performance
- Tree-based DOM merging with text-based deduplication
Documentation:
- Comprehensive guide at docs/md_v2/advanced/virtual-scroll.md
- API reference updates in parameters.md and page-interaction.md
- Blog article explaining the solution and techniques
- Complete examples with local test server
Testing:
- Full test suite achieving 100% capture of 1000 items
- Examples for Twitter timeline, Instagram grid scenarios
- Local test server with different scrolling behaviors
This enables scraping of modern websites that were previously impossible to fully capture with traditional scrolling techniques.
- Generate OneShot js code geenrator
- Introduced a new C4A-Script tutorial example for login flow using Blockly.
- Updated index.html to include Blockly theme and event editor modal for script editing.
- Created a test HTML file for testing Blockly integration.
- Added comprehensive C4A-Script API reference documentation covering commands, syntax, and examples.
- Developed core documentation for C4A-Script, detailing its features, commands, and real-world examples.
- Updated mkdocs.yml to include new C4A-Script documentation in navigation.
Add new RegexExtractionStrategy for fast, zero-LLM extraction of common data types:
- Built-in patterns for emails, URLs, phones, dates, and more
- Support for custom regex patterns
- LLM-assisted pattern generation utility
- Optimized HTML preprocessing with fit_html field
- Enhanced network response body capture
Breaking changes: None
Adds a new content_source parameter to MarkdownGenerationStrategy that allows
selecting which HTML content to use for markdown generation:
- cleaned_html (default): uses post-processed HTML
- raw_html: uses original webpage HTML
- fit_html: uses preprocessed HTML for schema extraction
Changes include:
- Added content_source parameter to MarkdownGenerationStrategy
- Updated AsyncWebCrawler to handle HTML source selection
- Added examples and tests for the new feature
- Updated documentation with new parameter details
BREAKING CHANGE: Renamed cleaned_html parameter to input_html in generate_markdown()
method signature to better reflect its generalized purpose
Implement comprehensive network request and console message capturing functionality:
- Add capture_network_requests and capture_console_messages config parameters
- Add network_requests and console_messages fields to models
- Implement Playwright event listeners to capture requests, responses, and console output
- Create detailed documentation and examples
- Add comprehensive tests
This feature enables deep visibility into web page activity for debugging,
security analysis, performance profiling, and API discovery in web applications.
Add ability to capture web pages as MHTML format, which includes all page resources
in a single file. This enables complete page archival and offline viewing.
- Add capture_mhtml parameter to CrawlerRunConfig
- Implement MHTML capture using CDP in AsyncPlaywrightCrawlerStrategy
- Add mhtml field to CrawlResult and AsyncCrawlResponse models
- Add comprehensive tests for MHTML capture functionality
- Update documentation with MHTML capture details
- Add exclude_all_images option for better memory management
Breaking changes: None
Adds new target_elements parameter to CrawlerRunConfig that allows more flexible content selection than css_selector. This enables focusing markdown generation and data extraction on specific elements while still processing the entire page for links and media.
Key changes:
- Added target_elements list parameter to CrawlerRunConfig
- Modified WebScrapingStrategy and LXMLWebScrapingStrategy to handle target_elements
- Updated documentation with examples and comparison between css_selector and target_elements
- Fixed table extraction in content_scraping_strategy.py
BREAKING CHANGE: Table extraction logic has been modified to better handle thead/tbody structures
Add new features to enhance browser automation and HTML extraction:
- Add CDP browser launch capability with customizable ports and profiles
- Implement JsonLxmlExtractionStrategy for faster HTML parsing
- Add CLI command 'crwl cdp' for launching standalone CDP browsers
- Support connecting to external CDP browsers via URL
- Optimize selector caching and context-sensitive queries
BREAKING CHANGE: LLMConfig import path changed from crawl4ai.types to crawl4ai
Rename LlmConfig to LLMConfig across the codebase to follow consistent naming conventions.
Update all imports and usages to use the new name.
Update documentation and examples to reflect the change.
BREAKING CHANGE: LlmConfig has been renamed to LLMConfig. Users need to update their imports and usage.
* fix: Update export of URLPatternFilter
* chore: Add dependancy for cchardet in requirements
* docs: Update example for deep crawl in release note for v0.5
* Docs: update the example for memory dispatcher
* docs: updated example for crawl strategies
* Refactor: Removed wrapping in if __name__==main block since this is a markdown file.
* chore: removed cchardet from dependancy list, since unclecode is planning to remove it
* docs: updated the example for proxy rotation to a working example
* feat: Introduced ProxyConfig param
* Add tutorial for deep crawl & update contributor list for bug fixes in feb alpha-1
* chore: update and test new dependancies
* feat:Make PyPDF2 a conditional dependancy
* updated tutorial and release note for v0.5
* docs: update docs for deep crawl, and fix a typo in docker-deployment markdown filename
* refactor: 1. Deprecate markdown_v2 2. Make markdown backward compatible to behave as a string when needed. 3. Fix LlmConfig usage in cli 4. Deprecate markdown_v2 in cli 5. Update AsyncWebCrawler for changes in CrawlResult
* fix: Bug in serialisation of markdown in acache_url
* Refactor: Added deprecation errors for fit_html and fit_markdown directly on markdown. Now access them via markdown
* fix: remove deprecated markdown_v2 from docker
* Refactor: remove deprecated fit_markdown and fit_html from result
* refactor: fix cache retrieval for markdown as a string
* chore: update all docs, examples and tests with deprecation announcements for markdown_v2, fit_html, fit_markdown
* feature: Add LlmConfig to easily configure and pass LLM configs to different strategies
* pulled in next branch and resolved conflicts
* feat: Add gemini and deepseek providers. Make ignore_cache in llm content filter to true by default to avoid confusions
* Refactor: Update LlmConfig in LLMExtractionStrategy class and deprecate old params
* updated tests, docs and readme
Remove content filter related code and parameters as part of simplifying the crawler configuration. This includes:
- Removing ContentFilter import and related classes
- Removing content_filter parameter from CrawlerRunConfig
- Cleaning up LLMExtractionStrategy constructor parameters
BREAKING CHANGE: Removed content_filter parameter from CrawlerRunConfig. Users should migrate to using extraction strategies for content filtering.
Implements a new proxy rotation system with the following changes:
- Add ProxyRotationStrategy abstract base class
- Add RoundRobinProxyStrategy concrete implementation
- Integrate proxy rotation with AsyncWebCrawler
- Add proxy_rotation_strategy parameter to CrawlerRunConfig
- Add example script demonstrating proxy rotation usage
- Remove deprecated synchronous WebCrawler code
- Clean up rate limiting documentation
BREAKING CHANGE: Removed synchronous WebCrawler support and related rate limiting configurations
Enhanced markdown formatting, fixed list indentation, and improved readability across multiple API documentation files:
- arun.md
- arun_many.md
- async-webcrawler.md
- parameters.md
Changes include:
- Consistent list formatting and indentation
- Better spacing between sections
- Clearer separation of content blocks
- Fixed quotation marks and code block formatting
Add support for checking and respecting robots.txt rules before crawling websites:
- Implement RobotsParser class with SQLite caching
- Add check_robots_txt parameter to CrawlerRunConfig
- Integrate robots.txt checking in AsyncWebCrawler
- Update documentation with robots.txt compliance examples
- Add tests for robot parser functionality
The cache uses WAL mode for better concurrency and has a default TTL of 7 days.
Add comprehensive documentation for the new streaming mode feature in arun_many():
- Update arun_many() API docs to reflect streaming return type
- Add streaming examples in quickstart and multi-url guides
- Document stream parameter in configuration classes
- Add clone() helper method documentation for configs
This change improves documentation for processing large numbers of URLs efficiently.
Reorganize dispatcher functionality into separate components:
- Create dedicated dispatcher classes (MemoryAdaptive, Semaphore)
- Add RateLimiter for smart request throttling
- Implement CrawlerMonitor for real-time progress tracking
- Move dispatcher config from CrawlerRunConfig to separate classes
BREAKING CHANGE: Dispatcher configuration moved from CrawlerRunConfig to dedicated dispatcher classes. Users need to update their configuration approach for multi-URL crawling.
Reorganize documentation into core/advanced/extraction sections for better navigation.
Update terminal theme styles and add rich library for better CLI output.
Remove redundant tutorial files and consolidate content into core sections.
Add personal story to index page for project context.
BREAKING CHANGE: Documentation structure has been significantly reorganized
- Added detailed CrawlerRunConfig parameters documentation.
- Introduced plans for real-time event-driven crawling.
- Updated async logger default level to DEBUG for better insights.
- Improved structure and readability in configuration file.
- Enhanced documentation on future capabilities in new blog entries.
Major changes:
- Add browser takeover feature using CDP for authentic browsing
- Implement Docker support with full API server documentation
- Enhance Mockdown with tag preservation system
- Improve parallel crawling performance
This release focuses on authenticity and scalability, introducing the ability
to use users' own browsers while providing containerized deployment options.
Breaking changes include modified browser handling and API response structure.
See CHANGELOG.md for detailed migration guide.
