How to scrape real time streaming data with Python?

Question

I was trying to scrape the number of flights for this webpage https://www.flightradar24.com/56.16,-49.51

The number is highlighted in the picture below:

The number is updated every 8 seconds.

This is what I tried with BeautifulSoup:

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
import time

r=requests.get("https://www.flightradar24.com/56.16,-49.51")
c=r.content
soup=BeautifulSoup(c,"html.parser")
value=soup.find_all("span",{"class":"choiceValue"})
print(value)

But that always returns 0:

[<span class="choiceValue" id="menuPlanesValue">0</span>]

View source also shows 0, so I understand why BeautifulSoup returns 0 too.

Anyone know any other method to get the current value?

Answer 1

The problem with your approach is that the page first loads a view, then performs regular requests to refresh the page. If you look at the network tab in the developer console in Chrome (for example), you'll see the requests to https://data-live.flightradar24.com/zones/fcgi/feed.js?bounds=59.09,52.64,-58.77,-47.71&faa=1&mlat=1&flarm=1&adsb=1&gnd=1&air=1&vehicles=1&estimated=1&maxage=7200&gliders=1&stats=1

The response is regular json:

{
  "full_count": 11879,
  "version": 4,
  "afefdca": [
    "A86AB5",
    56.4288,
    -56.0721,
    233,
    38000,
    420,
    "0000",
    "T-F5M",
    "B763",
    "N641UA",
    1473852497,
    "LHR",
    "ORD",
    "UA929",
    0,
    0,
    "UAL929",
    0
  ],
  ...
  "aff19d9": [
    "A12F78",
    56.3235,
    -49.3597,
    251,
    36000,
    436,
    "0000",
    "F-EST",
    "B752",
    "N176AA",
    1473852497,
    "DUB",
    "JFK",
    "AA291",
    0,
    0,
    "AAL291",
    0
  ],
  "stats": {
    "total": {
      "ads-b": 8521,
      "mlat": 2045,
      "faa": 598,
      "flarm": 152,
      "estimated": 464
    },
    "visible": {
      "ads-b": 0,
      "mlat": 0,
      "faa": 6,
      "flarm": 0,
      "estimated": 3
    }
  }
}

I'm not sure if this API is protected in any way, but it seems like I can access it without any issues using curl.

More info:

• aviation.stackexchange - Is there an API to get real-time FAA flight data?
• Flightradar24 Forum - API access (meaning your use case is probably discouraged)

Answer 2

So based on what @Andre has found out, I wrote this code:

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
import time

def get_count():
    url = "https://data-live.flightradar24.com/zones/fcgi/feed.js?bounds=59.09,52.64,-58.77,-47.71&faa=1&mlat=1&flarm=1&adsb=1&gnd=1&air=1&vehicles=1&estimated=1&maxage=7200&gliders=1&stats=1"

    # Request with fake header, otherwise you will get an 403 HTTP error
    r = requests.get(url, headers={'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0'})

    # Parse the JSON
    data = r.json()
    counter = 0

    # Iterate over the elements to get the number of total flights
    for element in data["stats"]["total"]:
        counter += data["stats"]["total"][element]

    return counter

while True:
    print(get_count())
    time.sleep(8)

The code should be self explaining, everything it does is printing the actual flight count every 8 seconds :)

Note: The values are similar to the ones on the website, but not the same. This is because it's unlikely, that the Python script and the website are sending a request at the same time. If you want to get more accurate results, just make a request every 4 seconds for example.

Use this code as you want, extend it or whatever. Hope this helps!