reviews-collector-ios

Getting Started

// Create our Collector
const Collector = require('reviews-collector-ios');
// Create an instance of Collector to get reviews of Google Maps and MapQuest and only parse 2 pages max
const collector = new Collector(['585027354', '316126557'], { maxPages: 2 });

// Do something when we parse a review
collector.on('review', (result) => {
	console.log(`Found a ${result.review.rating} star review`);
});

// Do something when we finish parsing a page of reviews
collector.on('page complete', (result) => {
	console.log(`Finished page ${result.pageNum} of ${result.appId} and found ${result.reviews.length} reviews`);
});

// Do something when we are done parsing an app
collector.on('done collecting', (result) => {
	if (result.error) {
		console.error('Stopped collecting because something went wrong');
	} else {
		console.log(`Finished collecting reviews for ${result.appId}`);
	}
});

// Exit once we are done with all of the apps
collector.on('done with apps', () => {
	console.log('Finished collecting reviews for all of the apps');
	process.exit();
});

// Start collecting reviews
collector.collect();

Instantiating

First, create a Collector prototype by requiring reviews-collector-ios

var Collector = require('reviews-collector-ios');

Next, create an Collector instance using the new keyword and passing an app ID (or an array of app IDs) and an options object

// The app Id argument can be a single app ID string...
var singleAppCollector = new Collector('585027354', { maxPages: 2 });
// ...or an array of app ID strings
var multiAppCollector = new Collector(['585027354', '316126557'], { maxPages: 2 });

Where the arguments are:

• App ID (string|string[]): The app ID is the portion after the /id in the iTunes URL (e.g. the app ID for this URL - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-maps-real-time-navigation/id585027354?mt=8 - would be 585027354). You can pass a single app ID as a string, or multiple app IDs as an array of strings
• Options (Object): An object with any (or none) of the following properties:
  • maxPages (Default 5): The maximum number of pages of reviews to parse. Use 0 for unlimited
  • checkBeforeContinue (Default false): When true, the page complete event will have both a continue and a stop function as properties of the object emitted on the event (details below). One of these must be called before the collector will proceed. This is useful when you want to, for example, check to see if the reviews already exist in your database or if they were created in the last X days, etc. Note: When this is set to true, maxPages will be ignored
    • continue() - Keep processing this app if possible
    • stop() - Stop processing this app and move onto the next one, if applicable
  • userAgent (Default iTunes/12.1.2 (Macintosh; OS X 10.10.3) AppleWebKit/0600.5.17): The user agent string to use when making requests
  • delay (Default 1000): The delay (in milliseconds) between page requests
  • maxRetries (Default 3): The maximum number of times to retry a page that could not be parsed before giving up

Listening for Events

Several events are triggered as the Collector parses reviews. You can setup event listeners for these using:

collector.on('<EVENT NAME>', function (result) {
	// Do something with the result every time the event is fired
});

Where the event name is one of:

• 'review'

  • Fires when: A review is parsed from the page

  • Emits:

    {
    	os: 'iOS', // The OS of the app
    	appId: '585027354', // The ID of the app
    	pageNum: 3, // The page that the review was pulled from
    	review: {
    		id: '1383547048', // The unique review ID
    		date: 'Wed May 25 2016 04:00:00 GMT-0400 (EDT)', // The date of the review (as a Date object)
    		rating: 5, // The star rating given in the review
    		title: 'Great app', // The (optional) title of the review
    		text: 'This app is my most favorite' // The (optional) body of the review
    	}
    }

• 'page complete'

  • Fires when: A page of reviews has been parsed

  • Emits:

    {
    	os: 'iOS', // The OS of the app
    	appId: '585027354', // The ID of the app
    	pageNum: 3, // The page that the review was pulled from
    	reviews: [ /* Review objects */ ],
    	firstReviewTime: 'Wed May 23 2016 04:00:00 GMT-0400 (EDT)', // The timestamp of the oldest review on the page (as a Date object)
    	lastReviewTime: 'Wed May 25 2016 04:00:00 GMT-0400 (EDT)', // The timestamp of the newest review on the page (as a Date object)
    	// If the 'checkBeforeContinue' option is set to true:
    	continue: function() {}, // Continue processing reviews for the app
    	stop: function() {} // Stop processing the app
    }

• 'done collecting'

  • Fires when: The collector has finished collecting reviews for a particular app for one of the following reasons:

    • The collector's maxPages limit is reached for an app
    • The collector reaches the last page of reviews for the app
    • The collector's maxRetries limit is reached for an app

  • Emits:

    {
    	os: 'iOS', // The OS of the app
    	appId: '585027354', // The ID of the app
    	pageNum: 3, // The page that the review was pulled from
    	appsRemaining: 0, // # of apps left in queue
    	error: undefined || { /* Error object */ }
    }

• 'done with apps'

  • Fires when: Processing has completed for all of the apps

  • Emits:

    {
    	os: 'iOS' // The OS of the app
    }

Starting the Collector

Once you have created an instance of Collector and setup your event listeners, you can begin the collection process using:

collector.collect();

The Collector will then collect reviews until it reaches one of the stop points described in the done collecting event (see above)

Examples

You can find a few examples of using the module within the /examples folder:

• single_app.js - A basic example of how to collect reviews for a single app using maxPages to determine page depth
• multi_app.js - An example of collecting reviews for multiple apps using maxPages to determine page depth
• check_before_continue.js - An example of collecting reviews for multiple apps using checkBeforeContinue to determine page depth (based on review date)