How to Scrape Google Flights with Python

• Free Google Flights Scraper
  • Prerequisites
  • Installation
  • Getting the URL for a Google Flights page
  • Scraping Google Flights
  • Notes
• Scrape public Google Flights data with Oxylabs API
  • Installing prerequisite libraries
  • Creating core structure
  • Getting the price
  • Getting the flight time
  • Getting the airline name
  • Final result

Free Google Flights Scraper

A free tool used to get data from Google Flights for a provided Google Flights URL.

Prerequisites

To run this tool, you need to have Python 3.11 installed in your system.

Installation

Open up a terminal window, navigate to this repository and run this command:

make install

Getting the URL for a Google Flights page

First of all, go to Google Flights in your browser and select your desired departure and arrival locations along with the dates.

For this example, we'll be scraping flights from Berlin to Paris, two weeks apart.

After clicking Search, you should see something like this.

Copy and save the URL from your browser, it will be used for scraping the data for this flight configuration.

Here's the URL for this example https://www.google.com/travel/flights/search?tfs=CBwQAhooEgoyMDI0LTA5LTA0agwIAxIIL20vMDE1NnFyDAgDEggvbS8wNXF0ahooEgoyMDI0LTA5LTE4agwIAxIIL20vMDVxdGpyDAgDEggvbS8wMTU2cUABSAFwAYIBCwj___________8BmAEB

Scraping Google Flights

To get results from Google Flights, simply run this command in your terminal:

make scrape URL="<your_google_flights_url>"

With the URL we retrieved earlier, the command would look like this:

make scrape URL="https://www.google.com/travel/flights/search?tfs=CBwQAhooEgoyMDI0LTA5LTA0agwIAxIIL20vMDE1NnFyDAgDEggvbS8wNXF0ahooEgoyMDI0LTA5LTE4agwIAxIIL20vMDVxdGpyDAgDEggvbS8wMTU2cUABSAFwAYIBCwj___________8BmAEB"

Make sure to surround the URL with quotation marks, otherwise the tool might have trouble parsing it.

After running the command, your terminal should look something like this:

After the tool has finished running, you should notice that a flights.csv file appeared in your current directory.

This data in this file has these columns for the Google Flights data based on your provided URL:

• price - The full price of a flight.
• departure_time - The departure time of a flight.
• arrival_time - The arrival time of a flight.
• airline - The airline, or multiple airlines that operate the flight.
• stops - The number of stops between the departure and arrival locations.
• full_detail - The full detail of the flight in plain text.

Here's an example of how the data can look like:

Notes

In case the code doesn't work or your project is of bigger scale, please refer to the second part of the tutorial. There, we showcase how to scrape public data with Oxylabs Scraper API.

Scrape public Google Flights data with Oxylabs API

In case you were not able to carry out your project with the free scraper, you may use Oxylabs API instead.

In this section of the guide, we’re going to demonstrate how to scrape public data from flight pages and generate search results with Python and Oxylabs Google Flights API (a part of Web Scraper API). To use the Oxylabs API, you'll need an active subscription – you can get a free trial by signing up via the self-service dashboard.

We’ll gather all sorts of data, including price, flight time, and airline name.

Head to our blog to see the complete article with in-depth explanations and images for a visual reference.

• 1. Installing prerequisite libraries
• 2. Creating core structure
• 3. Getting the price
• 4. Getting the flight time
• 5. Getting the airline name
• 6. Final result

Installing prerequisite libraries

pip install bs4

Creating core structure

To start off, let’s create a function that will take a URL as a parameter, scrape that URL with Google Flights API (you can get a free 7-day trial for it) and return the scraped HTML:

def get_flights_html(url):
    payload = {
        'source': 'google',
        'render': 'html',
        'url': url,
    }

    response = requests.request(
        'POST',
        'https://realtime.oxylabs.io/v1/queries',
        auth=('username', 'password'),
        json=payload,
    )

    response_json = response.json()

    html = response_json['results'][0]['content']

    return html

Make sure to change up USERNAME and PASSWORD with your actual Oxylabs credentials.

Next up, we’ll create a function that accepts a BeautifulSoup object created from the HTML of the whole page. This function will create and return an array of objects containing information from individual flight listings. Let’s try to form the function in such a way that makes it easily extendible if required:

def extract_flight_information_from_soup(soup_of_the_whole_page):
    flight_listings = soup_of_the_whole_page.find_all('li','pIav2d')

    flights = []

    for listing in flight_listings:
        if listing is not None:
            # Add some specific data extraction here

            flight = {}

            flights.append(flight)

    return flights

Now that we can get the HTML and have a function to hold our information extraction, we can organize both of those into one:

def extract_flights_data_from_urls(urls):
    constructed_flight_results = []

    for url in urls:
        html = get_flights_html(url)

        soup = BeautifulSoup(html,'html.parser')

        flights = extract_flight_information_from_soup(soup)

        constructed_flight_results.append({
            'url': url,
            'flight_data': flights
        })

    return constructed_flight_results

This function will take an array of URLs as a parameter and return an object of extracted flight data.

One thing left for our core is a function that takes this data and saves it as a file:

def save_results(results, filepath):
    with open(filepath, 'w', encoding='utf-8') as file:
        json.dump(results, file, ensure_ascii=False, indent=4)

    return

We can finish by creating a simple main function to invoke all that we’ve created so far:

def main():
    results_file = 'data.json'

    urls = [
        'https://www.google.com/travel/flights?tfs=CBsQAhooEgoyMDI0LTA3LTI4agwIAxIIL20vMDE1NnFyDAgCEggvbS8wNGpwbBooEgoyMDI0LTA4LTAxagwIAhIIL20vMDRqcGxyDAgDEggvbS8wMTU2cUABSAFSA0VVUnABemxDalJJTkRCNVRGbDBOMU5UVEdOQlJ6aG5lRUZDUnkwdExTMHRMUzB0TFMxM1pXc3lOMEZCUVVGQlIxZ3dhRWxSUVRoaWFtTkJFZ1pWTWpnMk1qSWFDZ2lRYnhBQ0dnTkZWVkk0SEhEN2VBPT2YAQGyARIYASABKgwIAxIIL20vMDRqcGw&hl=en-US&curr=EUR&sa=X&ved=0CAoQtY0DahgKEwiAz9bF5PaEAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQngM',
        'https://www.google.com/travel/flights/search?tfs=CBwQAhooEgoyMDI0LTA3LTI4agwIAxIIL20vMDE1NnFyDAgDEggvbS8wN19rcRooEgoyMDI0LTA4LTAxagwIAxIIL20vMDdfa3FyDAgDEggvbS8wMTU2cUABSAFwAYIBCwj___________8BmAEB&hl=en-US&curr=EUR'
    ]

    constructed_flight_results = extract_flights_data_from_urls(urls)

    save_results(constructed_flight_results, results_file)

Getting the price

def get_price(soup_element):
    price = soup_element.find('div','BVAVmf').find('div','YMlIz').get_text()

    return price

Getting the flight time

def get_time(soup_element):
    spans = soup_element.find('div','Ir0Voe').find('div','zxVSec', recursive=False).find_all('span', 'eoY5cb')

    time = ""

    for span in spans:
        time = time + span.get_text() + "; "

    return time

Getting the airline name

def get_airline(soup_element):
    airline = soup_element.find('div','Ir0Voe').find('div','sSHqwe')

    spans = airline.find_all('span', attrs={"class": None}, recursive=False)

    result = ""

    for span in spans:
        result = result + span.get_text() + "; "

    return result

Having all of these functions for data extraction, we just need to add them to the place we designated earlier to finish up our code.

def extract_flight_information_from_soup(soup_of_the_whole_page):
    flight_listings = soup_of_the_whole_page.find_all('li','pIav2d')

    flights = []

    for listing in flight_listings:
        if listing is not None:
            price = get_price(listing)
            time = get_time(listing)
            airline = get_airline(listing)

            flight = {
                "airline": airline,
                "time": time,
                "price": price
            }

            flights.append(flight)

    return flights

Final result

If we add all of it together, the final product should look something like this.

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
import requests
import json

def get_price(soup_element):
    price = soup_element.find('div','BVAVmf').find('div','YMlIz').get_text()

    return price


def get_time(soup_element):
    spans = soup_element.find('div','Ir0Voe').find('div','zxVSec', recursive=False).find_all('span', 'eoY5cb')

    time = ""

    for span in spans:
        time = time + span.get_text() + "; "

    return time


def get_airline(soup_element):
    airline = soup_element.find('div','Ir0Voe').find('div','sSHqwe')

    spans = airline.find_all('span', attrs={"class": None}, recursive=False)

    result = ""

    for span in spans:
        result = result + span.get_text() + "; "

    return result


def save_results(results, filepath):
    with open(filepath, 'w', encoding='utf-8') as file:
        json.dump(results, file, ensure_ascii=False, indent=4)

    return


def get_flights_html(url):
    payload = {
        'source': 'google',
        'render': 'html',
        'url': url,
    }

    # Get response.
    response = requests.request(
        'POST',
        'https://realtime.oxylabs.io/v1/queries',
        auth=('username', 'password'),
        json=payload,
    )

    response_json = response.json()

    html = response_json['results'][0]['content']

    return html


def extract_flight_information_from_soup(soup_of_the_whole_page):
    flight_listings = soup_of_the_whole_page.find_all('li','pIav2d')

    flights = []

    for listing in flight_listings:
        if listing is not None:
            price = get_price(listing)
            time = get_time(listing)
            airline = get_airline(listing)

            flight = {
                "airline": airline,
                "time": time,
                "price": price
            }

            flights.append(flight)

    return flights


def extract_flights_data_from_urls(urls):
    constructed_flight_results = []

    for url in urls:
        html = get_flights_html(url)

        soup = BeautifulSoup(html,'html.parser')

        flights = extract_flight_information_from_soup(soup)

        constructed_flight_results.append({
            'url': url,
            'flight_data': flights
        })

    return constructed_flight_results


def main():
    results_file = 'data.json'

    urls = [
        'https://www.google.com/travel/flights?tfs=CBsQAhooEgoyMDI0LTA3LTI4agwIAxIIL20vMDE1NnFyDAgCEggvbS8wNGpwbBooEgoyMDI0LTA4LTAxagwIAhIIL20vMDRqcGxyDAgDEggvbS8wMTU2cUABSAFSA0VVUnABemxDalJJTkRCNVRGbDBOMU5UVEdOQlJ6aG5lRUZDUnkwdExTMHRMUzB0TFMxM1pXc3lOMEZCUVVGQlIxZ3dhRWxSUVRoaWFtTkJFZ1pWTWpnMk1qSWFDZ2lRYnhBQ0dnTkZWVkk0SEhEN2VBPT2YAQGyARIYASABKgwIAxIIL20vMDRqcGw&hl=en-US&curr=EUR&sa=X&ved=0CAoQtY0DahgKEwiAz9bF5PaEAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQngM',
        'https://www.google.com/travel/flights/search?tfs=CBwQAhooEgoyMDI0LTA3LTI4agwIAxIIL20vMDE1NnFyDAgDEggvbS8wN19rcRooEgoyMDI0LTA4LTAxagwIAxIIL20vMDdfa3FyDAgDEggvbS8wMTU2cUABSAFwAYIBCwj___________8BmAEB&hl=en-US&curr=EUR'
    ]

    constructed_flight_results = extract_flights_data_from_urls(urls)

    save_results(constructed_flight_results, results_file)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

By employing Python and Oxylabs Web Scraper API, you can easily deal with the dynamic nature of Google Flights and gather public data successfully.

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