Scrapes Patreon users and stores the results in a SQLite database.
$ scrapy crawl patreon -a exclude_ranges=[[9,79],[81,29400]]
To read the scraped data:
$ sqlite3 patreon.db
sqlite>.headers on
sqlite>.mode markdown
sqlite>
SELECT
creator_id AS id,
COALESCE(data ->> '$.pageUser.data.attributes.full_name', data ->> '$.campaign.data.attributes.name') AS name,
COALESCE(data ->> '$.pageUser.data.attributes.vanity', data ->> '$.campaign.data.attributes.vanity') AS username,
data ->> '$.campaign.data.attributes.patron_count' AS patron_count,
data ->> '$.campaign.data.attributes.pledge_sum' AS pledge_sum
FROM creators
WHERE data IS NOT NULL AND patron_count > 0
ORDER BY patron_count DESC
LIMIT 20;
| id | name | username | patron_count | pledge_sum |
|-------|----------------------------|------------------|--------------|------------|
| 43579 | Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell | Kurzgesagt | 14772 | |
| 36361 | Amanda Palmer | amandapalmer | 11344 | |
| 51472 | Rob Has a Podcast | RHAP | 4576 | |
| 47403 | Melody Lane | Melodylane | 4197 | |
| 44481 | lovelyti | lovelyti | 3991 | |
| 39956 | Daily Tech News Show | dtns | 3840 | |
| 31752 | Veritasium | veritasium | 3514 | |
| 36723 | Pretty Much It | prettymuchit | 3315 | |
| 49401 | GamersNexus | gamersnexus | 3121 | 1141328 |
| 35605 | Robert Llewellyn | FullyChargedShow | 3085 | 1375957 |
| 42913 | Zach Weinersmith | ZachWeinersmith | 3035 | 652331 |
| 54111 | Dave Barrack | davebarrack | 2902 | 861600 |
| 40381 | VaatiVidya | vaatividya | 2529 | |
| 30881 | Pomplamoose | pomplamoose | 2394 | 1278756 |
| 31368 | Adam Neely | adamneely | 2152 | |
| 36340 | VoicePlay | VoicePlay | 1719 | |
| 38672 | Ranged Touch | rangedtouch | 1663 | 908023 |
| 43849 | TerminalMontage | terminalmontage | 1661 | |
| 43913 | David Pakman | davidpakmanshow | 1278 | 482958 |
| 48190 | Thunderf00t | Thunderf00t | 1277 | |
sqlite>
SELECT
creator_id AS id,
COALESCE(data ->> '$.pageUser.data.attributes.full_name', data ->> '$.campaign.data.attributes.name') AS name,
COALESCE(data ->> '$.pageUser.data.attributes.vanity', data ->> '$.campaign.data.attributes.vanity') AS username,
COALESCE(data ->> '$.pageUser.data.attributes.created', data ->> '$.campaign.data.attributes.created') AS join_date,
data ->> '$.userSuspensionReason' AS suspended_reason
FROM creators
WHERE data IS NOT NULL
ORDER BY creator_id
LIMIT 45;
| id | name | username | join_date | suspended_reason |
|-------|------------------|----------------|-------------------------------|------------------|
| 1 | Jack Conte | jackconte | | |
| 2 | Shishene Jing | shishene | | |
| 3 | Ruven Chu | ruven | 2011-09-10T00:00:00.000+00:00 | |
| 7 | Sandi Wu | | 2013-05-04T15:35:21.000+00:00 | |
| 8 | Mark Davis | | 2011-10-21T10:51:52.000+00:00 | |
| 80 | The Happy Talent | TheHappyTalent | 2011-11-15T03:53:06.000+00:00 | |
| 29418 | | | 2016-05-17T05:18:08.000+00:00 | |
| 29480 | | | 2016-05-17T05:18:08.000+00:00 | |
| 29495 | | | 2016-05-17T05:18:08.000+00:00 | |
| 29560 | | | 2016-05-17T05:18:08.000+00:00 | |
| 29562 | | | 2016-05-17T05:18:08.000+00:00 | |
| 29633 | | | 2016-05-17T05:18:08.000+00:00 | |
| 29748 | | | 2016-05-17T05:18:08.000+00:00 | |
| 29851 | | | 2016-05-17T05:18:08.000+00:00 | |
| 29906 | | | 2016-05-17T05:18:08.000+00:00 | |
| 29919 | | | 2016-05-17T05:18:08.000+00:00 | |
| 29967 | | | 2016-05-17T05:18:08.000+00:00 | |
| 30051 | | | 2016-05-17T05:18:08.000+00:00 | |
| 30060 | | | 2016-05-17T05:18:08.000+00:00 | |
| 30086 | | | 2016-05-17T05:18:08.000+00:00 | |
| 30102 | | | 2016-05-17T05:18:08.000+00:00 | |
| 30153 | | | 2016-05-17T05:18:08.000+00:00 | |
| 30172 | | | 2016-05-17T05:18:08.000+00:00 | |
| 30184 | | | 2016-05-17T05:18:08.000+00:00 | |
| 30351 | | | 2016-05-17T05:18:08.000+00:00 | |
| 30428 | | | 2016-05-17T05:18:08.000+00:00 | |
| 30433 | | | 2016-05-17T05:18:08.000+00:00 | |
| 30510 | | | 2016-05-17T05:18:08.000+00:00 | |
| 30529 | | | 2016-05-17T05:18:08.000+00:00 | |
| 30531 | | | 2016-05-17T05:18:08.000+00:00 | |
| 30558 | new test | | 2013-04-24T11:48:37.000+00:00 | |
| 30559 | test me | | 2013-04-24T12:19:29.000+00:00 | |
| 30560 | first test | | 2013-04-24T12:34:01.000+00:00 | |
| 30561 | Nataly Dawn | natalydawn | | |
| 30562 | Gem | geminieye | | |
| 30563 | | | | |
| 30564 | Ryan Lerman | RyanLerman | 2013-04-25T08:54:43.000+00:00 | |
| 30565 | Testers | | 2013-04-29T10:36:51.000+00:00 | |
| 30566 | Andrew McMurry | | 2013-04-29T21:04:16.000+00:00 | |
| 30567 | Joe Tester | | 2013-04-30T18:35:27.000+00:00 | |
| 30568 | Brenna Ehrlich | | 2013-04-30T19:46:54.000+00:00 | |
| 30569 | Sam Yam | sam | | |
| 30570 | | | | marked_for_nuke |
| 30571 | | | | marked_for_nuke |
| 30572 | | | | marked_for_nuke |
The data is scraped from inline JavaScript at /user?u=<user_id> rather than through the JSON API endpoint /api/user/<user_id> due to an aggressive Cloudflare firewall blocking access.*
There are some variations in data between the endpoints. For instance, the created timestamp is not available for the "campaign" flavor of user at the endpoint we use. When looking at a suspended user, our endpoint will provide a suspended_reason, but the user's name will be null, while /api/user/<user_id> will show the user's name but not a suspension reason.
Here are some of the suspension reasons I've discovered:
sqlite>
SELECT DISTINCT(data ->> '$.userSuspensionReason') AS suspended_reason
FROM creators WHERE suspended_reason IS NOT NULL;
| suspended_reason |
|-------------------|
| marked_for_nuke |
| removed_gdpr |
| removed_self_nuke |
| removed |
* The Cloudflare firewall can be bypassed with puppeteer-extra-plugin-stealth, but scraping will likely be slower due to driving a real browser.
This project is licensed under the terms of the MIT license.