Scraping Google image search Python (requests, beautifulsoup)

Question

So I am trying to build scraper for downloading all images (ORIGNAL QUALITY) on Google search and want to know if it is possible without using SELENIUM and how

I tried it using requests and BeautifulSoup but response html only contain Image refer links and thumbnail links

Original links needed intraction with thumbnails then it will appear on anchor elements

Thanks

Answer 1

You don't have to render JavaScript in order to get more images as wishmaster mentioned. There's exist a URL param ijn , eg ijn=0 means 100 images and ijn=1 means 200 images, and so on.

To scrape the full-res image URL with requests and beautifulsoup you need to scrape data from the page source code via regex .

Find all <script> tags:

soup.select('script')

Match images data via regex :

matched_images_data = ''.join(re.findall(r"AF_initDataCallback\(([^<]+)\);", str(all_script_tags)))

Match desired images ( full res size ) via regex :

matched_google_full_resolution_images = re.findall(r"(?:'|,),\[\"(https:|http.*?)\",\d+,\d+\]",
                                                    matched_images_data)

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')

---

If you need to save them, you have two easy options via urllib.request.urlretrieve or requests :

To save images via urllib.request.urlretrieve(url, filename) ( more in-depth ):

import urllib.request

# often times it will throw 404 error, to avoid it we need to pass user-agent

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'LOCAL_FOLDER_NAME/YOUR_IMAGE_NAME.jpg') # you can skip folder path and it will save them in current working directory

To save images via requests ( code taken from this answer ):

import requests

url = "YOUR_IMG.jpg"
response = requests.get(url)
if response.status_code == 200:
    with open("/YOUR/PATH/TO_IMAGE/sample_img.jpg", 'wb') as f:
        f.write(response.content)

---

Code to scrape and download full-res images and full 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": "pexels cat",
    "tbm": "isch", 
    "hl": "en",
    "ijn": "0",
}

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('\nDownloading Google Full 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'Images/original_size_img_{index}.jpg')


get_images_data()


-------------
'''
Google Images Metadata:
9,000+ Best Cat Photos · 100% Free Download · Pexels Stock Photos
pexels.com
https://www.pexels.com/search/cat/
...

Google Image Thumbnails:
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR2cZsuRkkLWXOIsl9BZzbeaCcI0qav7nenDvvqi-YSm4nVJZYyljRsJZv6N5vS8hMNU_w&usqp=CAU
...

Full Resolution Images:
https://images.pexels.com/photos/1170986/pexels-photo-1170986.jpeg?cs=srgb&dl=pexels-evg-culture-1170986.jpg&fm=jpg
https://images.pexels.com/photos/3777622/pexels-photo-3777622.jpeg?auto=compress&cs=tinysrgb&dpr=1&w=500
...
'''

---

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 in your case is that you don't have to deal with regex to match and extract needed data from the source code of the page, instead, you only need to iterate over structured JSON and get what you want.

Code to integrate:

import os, urllib.request, 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))

    # -----------------------
    # Downloading images

    for index, image in enumerate(results['images_results']):

        # 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(image['original'], f'SerpApi_Images/original_size_img_{index}.jpg')


get_google_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
  }
]
'''

PS - I wrote a bit more in-depth blog post about how to scrapeGoogle Images .

Disclaimer, I work for SerpApi.