nhlscrapi: NHL Scraper API

All good things ...

I wrote this as a way to learn python seemingly forever ago. Back then parsing horrendously structured HTML files from the NHL site was basically the only way to go. No longer.

The NHL's backend API is public. Just use that.

For example, if you put https://statsapi.web.nhl.com/api/v1/teams/1 in your browser you'll get some nice JSON about the NJ Devils. While it seems inexplicable that they'd be the first team anyone would put into their database, it's the NHL. Blame Bettman. Better yet, if you want the game feed for the first game of the 2017-2018 season? Go here.

Best of all, the nhlapi project on GitLab is working to uncover and document the endpoints.

So please, someone just write a nice client for that API.

Purpose

Provide a Python API for accessing NHL game data including play by play, game summaries, player stats et c. The library hides the guts of the NHL website scraping process and encapsulates not only the data gathering, but data output. This project is inspired by the R package nhlscrapr, an all around must for NHL analytics geeks and R power users.

nhlscrapi is in the early/initial stages, but will be updated regularly. Currently, the package support most of the game summary reports, but all of the important and essential ones.

Related projects:

• nhlscrapr
• py-nhl

Installation

Getting started is as easy as:

pip install nhlscrapi

For more information on the setup, see the PyPi: nhlscrapi. The documentation for the package can be found at nhlscrapi: NHL Scraper API.

Usage Example

Scrape data for game 1226 of 2014, Ottawa vs Pittsburgh.

from nhlscrapi.games.game import Game, GameKey, GameType
from nhlscrapi.games.cumstats import Score, ShotCt, Corsi, Fenwick

season = 2014                                    # 2013-2014 season
game_num = 1226                                  #
game_type = GameType.Regular                     # regular season game
game_key = GameKey(season, game_type, game_num)

# define stat types that will be counted as the plays are parsed
cum_stats = {
  'Score': Score(),
  'Shots': ShotCt(),
  'Corsi': Corsi(),
  'Fenwick': Fenwick()
}
game = Game(game_key, cum_stats=cum_stats)

# also http requests and processing are lazy
# accumulators require play by play info so they parse the RTSS PBP
print('Final         : {}'.format(game.cum_stats['Score'].total))
print('Shootout      : {}'.format(game.cum_stats['Score'].shootout.total))
print('Shots         : {}'.format(game.cum_stats['Shots'].total))
print('EV Shot Atts  : {}'.format(game.cum_stats['Corsi'].total))
print('Corsi         : {}'.format(game.cum_stats['Corsi'].share()))
print('FW Shot Atts  : {}'.format(game.cum_stats['Fenwick'].total))
print('Fenwick       : {}'.format(game.cum_stats['Fenwick'].share()))

# http req for roster report
# only parses the sections related to officials and coaches
print('\nRefs          : {}'.format(game.refs))
print('Linesman      : {}'.format(game.linesman))
print('Coaches')
print('  Home        : {}'.format(game.home_coach))
print('  Away        : {}'.format(game.away_coach))

# scrape all remaining reports
game.load_all()

Current Release: v0.4.4

This is a pre-release and is not stable and fully fit for production. The first full stable release (v1.0.0) will be made available once the framework for all NHL game reports are completed. Currently, Play-by-Play, Home/Away TOI, Roster, Face-off Comparison and Event Summary reports are functional.

License

The NHL Scraper API is a free Python library provided under Apache License version 2.0.

• Free software: Apache License, v2.0
• Documentation: nhlscrapi: NHL Scraper API