//Miroslav Novotny//
Back

Flashscore API Scraper

Personal Project
Node.jsJavascriptAPIScraping
GitHub

This project is my modified version of an existing flashscore scraper. The original scraper had a solid foundation, but didn't fully suit my needs for the expertov project. I forked it and modified it to fit my requirements.

Most notably, I refactored the application into a REST API that integrates more easily with my Node.js backend.

I also optimized the scraper's speed. Instead of scraping each match individually in detail, I decided to collect data only from the upcoming fixtures page and the results page. This meant losing access to detailed match information (such as who the referee was), but I didn't need that data for my purposes anyway.

This effectively reduced the number of scrapes from a linear count based on the number of matches to a constant count of two scrapes, regardless of how many matches are in the league.

Key Changes and Improvements

  • Transformation into an API: The server uses the native Node.js http module to serve data through a /api/scrape endpoint.
  • Performance Optimization: The original implementation required a linear number of requests depending on the match count. This version is optimized to a fixed constant number of parallel requests. (From O(n) to O(1), where n is the number of matches)

API Specification

Endpoint: GET /api/scrape

The service expects three required query parameters to construct a valid URL.

Parameters:

  • sport: Type of sport (e.g., hockey)
  • country: Country (e.g., world)
  • league: League name (e.g., world-championship)

Example request for the Ice Hockey World Championship:

GET /api/scrape?sport=hockey&country=world&league=world-championship