HISTORY.md

History / Changelog

future v2.0.0

Breaking changes:

• Python 3.6 and 3.7 deprecated (#709)
• bare_extraction():
  • now returns an instance of the Document class by default
  • as_dict deprecation warning → use .as_dict() method on return value (#730)
• bare_extraction() and extract(): no_fallback deprecation warning → use fast instead (#730)
• downloads: remove decode argument in fetch_url() → use fetch_response instead (#724)
• deprecated graphical user interface now removed (#713)
• extraction: move max_tree_size parameter to settings.cfg (#742)
• see Python and CLI deprecations in the docs

Fixes:

• set options.source before raising error on empty doc tree by @dmoklaf (#707)
• robust encoding in options.source (#717)
• more robust mapping for conversion to HTML (#721)
• CLI downloads: use all information in settings file (#734)
• downloads: cleaner urllib3 code (#736)
• CLI: print URLs early for feeds and sitemaps with --list with @gremid (#744)

Metadata:

• more robust URL extraction (#710)

Maintenance:

• remove already deprecated functions and args (#716)
• add type hints (#723, #728)
• setup: use pyproject.toml file (#715)
• simplify code (#708, #709, #727)
• better debug messages in main_extractor (#714)
• evaluation: review data, update packages, add magic_html (#731)
• setup: explicit exports through __all__ (#740)

Documentation:

• fix link in docs/index.html by @nzw0301 (#711)
• remove docs from published packages (#743)

1.12.2

• downloads: add support for SOCKS proxies with @gremid (#682)
• extraction fix: ValueError in table spans (#685)
• spider: prune_xpath parameter added by @felipehertzer (#684)
• spider: relax strict parameter for link extraction (#687)
• sitemaps: max_sitemaps parameter added by @felipehertzer (#690)
• maintenance: make compression libraries optional (#691)
• metadata: review and lint code (#694)

1.12.1

Navigation:

• spider: restrict search to sections containing URL path (#673)
• crawler: add parameter class and types, breaking change for undocumented functions (#675)
• maintenance: simplify link discovery and extend tests (#674)
• CLI: review code, add types and tests (#677)

Bugfixes:

• fix AttributeError in element deletion (#668)
• fix MemoryError in table header columns (#665)

Docs:

• docs: fix variable name for extract_metadata in quickstart by @jpigla in #678

1.12.0

Breaking change:

• enforce fixed list of output formats, deprecate -out on the CLI (#647)

Faster, more accurate extraction:

• review link and structure checks (#653)
• improve justext fallback (#652)
• baseline: prevent LXML error in JSON-LD (#643), do not use as backup extraction (#646)
• review XPaths for undesirable content (#645)

Bugfixes and maintenance:

• CLI fix: markdown format should trigger include_formatting (#649)
• images fix: use a length threshold on src attribute (#654)
• XML-TEI: replace RelaxNG by DTD, remove pickle, and update (#655)
• formatting & markdown fix: add newlines (#656)
• table fix: prevent MemoryError & ValueError during conversion to text (#658)

Documentation:

• update crawls.rst: known is an unexpected argument, by @tommytyc in #638

1.11.0

Breaking change:

• metadata now skipped by default (#613), to trigger inclusion in all output formats:
  • with_metadata=True (Python)
  • --with-metadata (CLI)

Extraction:

• add HTML as output format (#614)
• better and faster baseline extraction (#619)
• better handling of HTML/XML elements (#628)
• XPath rules added with @felipehertzer (#540)
• fix: avoid faulty readability_lxml content (#635)

Evaluation:

• new scripts and data with @LydiaKoerber (#606, #615)
• additional data with @swetepete (#197)

Maintenance:

• docs extended and updated, added page on deduplication (#618)
• review code, add tests and types in part of the submodules (#620, #623, #624, #625)

1.10.0

Breaking changes:

• raise errors on deprecated CLI and function arguments (#581)
• regroup classes and functions linked to deduplication (#582) trafilatura.hashing → trafilatura.deduplication

Extraction:

• port of is_probably_readerable from readability.js by @zirkelc in #587
• Markdown table fixes by @naktinis in #601
• fix list spacing in TXT output (#598)
• CLI fixes: file processing options, mtime, and tests (#605)
• CLI fix: read standard input as binary (#607)

Downloads:

• fix deflate and add optional zstd to accepted encodings (#594)
• spider fix: use internal download utilities for robots.txt (#590)

Maintenance:

• add author XPaths (#567)
• update justext and lxml dependencies (#593)
• simplify code: unique function for length tests (#591)

Docs:

• fix typos by @RainRat in #603

1.9.0

Extraction:

• add markdown as explicit output (#550)
• improve recall preset (#571)
• speedup for readability-lxml (#547)
• add global options object for extraction and use it in CLI (#552)
• fix: better encoding detection (#548)
• recall: fix for lists inside tables with @mikhainin (#534)
• add symbol to preserve vertical spacing in Markdown (#499)
• fix: table cell separators in non-XML output (#563)
• slightly better accuracy and execution speed overall

Metadata:

• add file creation date (date extraction, JSON & XML-TEI) (#561)
• fix: empty content in meta tag by @felipehertzer (#545)

Maintenance:

• restructure and simplify code (#543, #556)
• CLI & downloads: revamp and use global options (#565)
• eval: review code, add guidelines and small benchmark (#542)
• fix: raise error if config file does not exist (#554)
• deprecate process_record() (#549)
• docs: convert readme to markdown and update info (#564, #578)

1.8.1

Maintenance:

• Pin LXML to prevent broken dependency (#535)

Extraction:

• Improve extraction accuracy for major news outlets (#530)
• Fix formatting by correcting order of element generation and space handling with @dlwh (#528)
• Fix: prevent tail insertion before children in nested elements by @knit-bee (#536)

1.8.0

Extraction:

• Better precision by @felipehertzer (#509, #520)
• Code formatting in TXT/Markdown output added (#498)
• Improved CSV output (#496)
• LXML: compile XPath expressions (#504)
• Overall speedup about +5%

Downloads and Navigation:

• More robust scans with is_live_page() (#501)
• Better sitemap start and safeguards (#503, #506)
• Fix for headers in response object (#513)

Maintenance:

• License changed to Apache 2.0
• Response class: convenience functions added (#497)
• lxml.html.Cleaner removed (#491)
• CLI fixes: parallel cores and processing (#524)

1.7.0

Extraction:

• improved html2txt() function

Downloads:

• add advanced fetch_response() function → pending deprecation for fetch_url(decode=False)

Maintenance:

• support for LXML v5+ (#484 by @knit-bee, #485)
• update htmldate

1.6.4

Maintenance:

• MacOS: fix setup, update htmldate and add tests (#460)
• drop invalid XML element attributes with @vbarbaresi in #462
• remove cyclic imports (#458)

Navigation:

• introduce MAX_REDIRECTS config setting and fix urllib3 redirect handling by @vbarbaresi in #461
• improve feed detection (#457)

Documentation:

• enhancements to documentation and testing with @Maddesea in #456

1.6.3

Extraction:

• preserve space in certain elements with @idoshamun (#429)
• optional list of xPaths to prune by @HeLehm (#414)

Metadata:

• more precise date extraction (see htmldate)
• new htmldate extensive search parameter in config (#434)
• changes in URLs: normalization, trackers removed (see courlan)

Navigation:

• reviewed code for feeds (#443)
• new config option: external URLs for feeds/sitemaps (#441)

Documentation:

• update, add page on text embeddings with @tonyyanga (#428, #435, #447)
• fix quickstart by @sashkab (#419)

1.6.2

Extraction:

• more lenient HTML parsing (#370)
• improved code block support with @idoshamun (#372, #401)
• conversion of relative links to absolute by @feltcat (#377)
• remove use of signal from core functions (#384)

Metadata:

• JSON-LD fix for sitenames by @felipehertzer (#383)

Command-line interface:

• more robust batch processing (#381)
• added --probe option to CLI to check for extractable content (#378, #392)

Maintenance:

• simplified code (#408)
• support for Python 3.12
• pinned LXML version for MacOS (#393)
• updated dependencies and parameters (notably htmldate and courlan)
• code cleaning by @marksmayo (#406)

1.6.1

Extraction:

• minor fixes: tables in figures (#301), headings (#354) and lists (#318)

Metadata:

• simplify and fully test JSON parsing code, with @felipehertzer (#352, #368)
• authors, JSON and unicode fixes by @felipehertzer in #365
• fix for authors without additionalName by @awwitecki in #363

Navigation:

• reviewed link processing in feeds and sitemaps (#340, #350)
• more robust spider (#359)
• updated underlying courlan package (#360)

1.6.0

Extraction:

• new content hashes and default file names (#314)
• fix deprecation warning with @sdondley in #321
• fix for metadata image by @andremacola in #328
• fix potential unicode issue in third-party extraction with @Korben00 in #331
• review logging levels (#347)

Command-line interface:

• more efficient sitemap processing (#326)
• more efficient downloads (#338)
• fix for single URL processing (#324) and URL blacklisting (#339)

Navigation:

• additional safety check on domain similarity for feeds and sitemaps
• new function is_live test() using HTTP HEAD request (#327)
• code parts supported by new courlan version

Maintenance:

• allow urllib3 version 2.0+
• minor code simplification and fixes

1.5.0

Extraction:

• fixes for metadata extraction with @felipehertzer (#295, #296), @andremacola (#282, #310), and @edkrueger (#303)
• pagetype and image urls added to metadata by @andremacola (#282, #310)
• add as_dict method to Document class with @edkrueger in #306
• XML output fix with @knit-bee in #315
• various smaller fixes: lists (#309), XPaths, metadata hardening

Navigation:

• transfer URL management to courlan.UrlStore (#232, #312)
• fixes for spider module

Maintenance:

• simplify code and extend tests
• underlying packages htmldate and courlan, update setup and docs

1.4.1

Extraction:

• XML output improvements with @knit-bee (#273, #274)
• extraction bugs fixed (#263, #266), more robust HTML doctype parsing
• adjust thresholds for link density in paragraphs

Metadata:

• improved title and sitename detection (#284)
• faster author, categories, domain name, and tags extraction
• fixes to author emoji regexes by @felipehertzer (#269)

Command-line interface:

• review argument consistency and add deprecation warnings (#261)

Setup:

• make download timeout configurable (#263)
• updated dependencies, use of faust-cchardet for Python 3.11

1.4.0

Impact on extraction and output format:

• better extraction (#233, #243 & #250 with @knit-bee, #246 with @mrienstra, #258)
• XML: preserve list type as attribute (#229)
• XML TEI: better conformity with @knit-bee (#238, #242, #253, #254)
• faster text cleaning and shorter code (#237 with @deedy5, #245)
• metadata: add language when detector is activated (#224)
• metadata: extend fallbacks and test coverage for json_metadata functions by @felipehertzer (#235)
• TXT: change markdown formatting of headers by @LaundroMat (#257)

Smaller changes in convenience functions:

• add function to clear caches (#219)
• CLI: change exit code if download fails (#223)
• settings: use "\n" for multiple user agents by @k-sareen (#241)

Updates:

• docs updated (and #244 by @dsgibbons)
• package dependencies updated

1.3.0

• fast and robust html2txt() function added (#221)
• more robust parsing (#228)
• fixed bugs in metadata extraction, with @felipehertzer in #213 & #226
• extraction about 10-20% faster, slightly better recall
• partial fixes for memory leaks (#216)
• docs extended and updated (#217, #225)
• prepared deprecation of old process_record() function
• more stable processing with updated dependencies

1.2.2

• more efficient rules for extraction
• metadata: further attributes used (with @felipehertzer)
• better baseline extraction
• issues fixed: #202, #204, #205
• evaluation updated

1.2.1

• --precision and --recall arguments added to the CLI
• better text cleaning: paywalls and comments
• improvements for Chinese websites (with @glacierck & @immortal-autumn): #186, #187, #188
• further bugs fixed: #189, #192 (with @felipehertzer), #200
• efficiency: faster module loading and improved RAM footprint

1.2.0

• efficiency: replaced module readability-lxml by trimmed fork
• bug fixed: (#179, #180, #183, #184)
• improved baseline extraction
• cleaner metadata (with @felipehertzer)

1.1.0

• encodings: better detection, output NFC-normalized Unicode
• maintenance and performance: more efficient code
• bugs fixed (#119, #136, #147, #160, #161, #162, #164, #167 and others)
• prepare compatibility with upcoming Python 3.11
• changed default settings
• extended documentation

1.0.0

• compress HTML backup files & seamlessly open .gz files
• support JSON web feeds
• graphical user interface integrated into main package
• faster downloads: reviewed backoff, compressed data
• optional modules: downloads with pycurl, language identification with py3langid
• bugs fixed (#111, #125, #132, #136, #140)
• minor optimizations and fixes by @vbarbaresi in #124 & #130
• fixed array with single or multiples entries on json extractor by @felipehertzer in #143
• code base refactored with @sourcery-ai #121, improved and optimized for Python 3.6+
• drop support for Python 3.5

0.9.3

• better, faster encoding detection: replaced chardet with charset_normalizer
• faster execution: updated justext to 3.0
• better extraction of sub-elements in tables (#78, #90)
• more robust web feed parsing
• further defined precision- and recall-oriented settings
• license extraction in footers (#118)

0.9.2

• first precision- and recall-oriented presets defined
• improvements in authorship extraction (thanks @felipehertzer)
• requesting TXT output with formatting now results in Markdown format
• bugs fixed: notably extraction robustness and consistency (#109, #111, #113)
• setting for cookies in request headers (thanks @muellermartin)
• better date extraction thanks to htmldate update

0.9.1

• improved author extraction (thanks @felipehertzer!)
• bugs fixed: HTML element handling, HTML meta attributes, spider, CLI, ...
• docs updated and extended
• CLI: option names normalized (heed deprecation warnings), new option explore

0.9.0

• focused crawling functions including politeness rules
• more efficient multi-threaded downloads + use as Python functions
• documentation extended
• bugs fixed: extraction and URL handling
• removed support for Python 3.4

0.8.2

• better handling of formatting, links and images, title type as attribute in XML formats
• more robust sitemaps and feeds processing
• more accurate extraction
• further consolidation: code simplified and bugs fixed

0.8.1

• extraction trade-off: slightly better recall
• code robustness: requests, configuration and navigation
• bugfixes: image data extraction

0.8.0

• improved link discovery and handling
• fixes in metadata extraction, feeds and sitemaps processing
• breaking change: the extract function now reads target format from output_format argument only
• new extraction option: preserve links, CLI options re-ordered
• more opportunistic backup extraction

0.7.0

• customizable configuration file to parametrize extraction and downloads
• better handling of feeds and sitemaps
• additional CLI options: crytographic hash for file name, use Internet Archive as backup
• more precise extraction
• faster downloads: requests replaced with bare urllib3 and custom decoding
• consolidation: bug fixes and improvements, many thanks to the issues reporters!

0.6.1

• added bare_extraction function returning Python variables
• improved link discovery in feeds and sitemaps
• option to preserve image info
• fixes (many thanks to bug reporters!)

0.6.0

• link discovery in sitemaps
• compatibility with Python 3.9
• extraction coverage improved
• deduplication now optional
• bug fixes

0.5.2

• optional language detector changed: langid → pycld3
• helper function bare_extraction()
• optional deduplication off by default
• better URL handling (courlan), more complete metadata
• code consolidation (cleaner and shorter)

0.5.1

• extended and more convenient command-line options
• output in JSON format
• bug fixes

0.5.0

• faster and more robust text and metadata extraction
• more efficient batch processing (parallel processing, URL queues)
• extraction and processing of ATOM/RSS feeds
• complete command-line tool with corresponding options

0.4.1

• better metadata extraction and integration (XML & XML-TEI)
• more efficient processing
• output directory as CLI-option

0.4

• improved "fast" mode (accuracy and speed)
• better fallbacks with readability-lxml and justext
• metadata extraction added
• more robust processing (tests, encoding handling)

0.3.1

• support for Python 3.4 reactivated
• bugs in XML output and discarding sections solved
• new tests and documentation

0.3.0

• code base re-structured for clarity and readability
• streamlined HTML processing and conversion
• internal less-recently-used cache (LRU) for deduplication
• export as CSV
• better test coverage, extraction recall and precision
• further documentation (trafilatura.readthedocs.org)
• optional processing of text formatting
• more complete settings file

0.2.1

• added metadata to the XML output
• production of valid XML TEI for simple documents

0.2.0

• better handling of nested elements, quotes and tables
• validation of XML TEI documents
• bulk download and processing

0.1.1

• handling of line breaks
• element trimming simplified

0.1.0

• first release used in production and meant to be archived for reproducibility and citability
• better extraction precision

0.0.5: last version compatible with Python 3.4

• optional dependencies
• bugs in parsing removed

0.0.4

• code profiling and speed-up

0.0.3

• tables included in extraction
• bypass justext in arguments
• better handling of non-p elements

0.0.2

• better handling of text nodes
• improvements in extraction recall

0.0.1

• first release, minimum viable package