Ouest-France Scraper

Scrape news articles from ouest-france.fr — France's largest regional newspaper — and export them as structured JSON. Paste a search URL, a direct article URL, or a free-text query, and get titles, leads, full body text, authors, dates, categories, photos, and paywall status for every article. No headless browser, no proxy, no anti-bot to fight: the actor talks to Ouest-France's own mobile JSON API directly.

How it works

✨ Why use this scraper?

• Mobile JSON API, not a headless browser. The ouest-france.fr website sits behind Akamai bot protection (returns 403 to plain HTTP). The Android app's API has no such wall — the actor fetches a short-lived Algolia key, searches the articles index, and pulls full content in three clean JSON calls. Faster, cheaper, and more reliable than rendering pages.
• Search or direct URLs. Run a free-text query ("Rennes", "immigration", "Nantes"), paste a recherche URL, or drop in individual article URLs. All three work and can be mixed in one run.
• Full article body, not just cards. Toggle fetchFullDetails to pull the complete article text (assembled from the content API's structured body blocks), byline, reading time, and all photos — or leave it off for fast card-only harvests.
• Paywall-aware. Each row carries a paywall flag and articleType. Paywalled articles (CONTENU_PAYANT) return their lead only; free articles return the full body. No pretending paywalled content is free.
• One row per article, deduped. No padding rows. If the same article shows up in two search queries, it appears once.
• No proxy required. The mobile API returns 200 with a plain User-Agent. Run direct and save the proxy budget.

🎯 Use cases

Audience	What they do with it
News monitors	Track coverage of a topic, region, or event across Ouest-France's archive (1.4M+ articles searchable)
Media analysts	Build datasets of headlines, leads, and publication dates for trend analysis
Data journalists	Harvest regional news (Bretagne, Rennes, Nantes) for investigation or archive
NLP / LLM pipelines	Feed structured article text (title, lead, body, categories) into models for summarization or classification
Content archivists	Snapshot articles with full body, author, and photo metadata before they change

📥 Supported inputs

Input type	Example	What happens
Search URL	https://www.ouest-france.fr/recherche/#!r/requete=Rennes&onglet=actualites	Query extracted from the hash fragment, run against the articles index
Article URL	https://www.ouest-france.fr/bretagne/rennes-35000/...-48996954-bdb4-11f1-81a4-4fea3020cab7	Resolved to full content via the by-url endpoint
Free-text query	searchQueries: ["Rennes", "immigration"]	Each query paginated through the Algolia articles index

Not supported: Ouest-France e-paper editions (feuilleteur), real estate listings (ouest-france.immo), funeral notices (avis-de-deces), and content behind a subscriber login.

🔄 How it works

1. The actor fetches a short-lived Algolia secured key from the search-engine configuration endpoint.
2. For each search query, it paginates the articles Algolia index (50 hits per page), collecting card metadata.
3. Direct article URLs are resolved via the v2/entities/by-url endpoint to full content.
4. If fetchFullDetails is on, each card is enriched with a v1/contents/{id} call for the full body, byline, photos, and paywall status.
5. Results are deduped by article ID and pushed to the dataset, one row per article.

⚙️ Input parameters

Field	Type	Default	Description
startUrls	array	["https://www.ouest-france.fr/recherche/#!r/requete=Rennes&onglet=actualites"]	Ouest-France search URLs and/or direct article URLs. Auto-classified.
searchQueries	array	[]	Free-text queries to run against the articles index. Alternative to search URLs.
fetchFullDetails	boolean	false	Open each article for the full body, byline, photos, and paywall status.
maxItems	integer	100	Hard cap on articles. Free-plan users are capped at 5.
maxConcurrency	integer	10	Parallel article-detail fetches (only when fetchFullDetails is on).
proxy	object	{ "useApifyProxy": false }	The mobile API has no anti-bot, so a proxy is usually unnecessary.

📊 Output overview

Each dataset row is one Ouest-France article. Card-only runs (the default) return title, lead, url, date, categories, source, paywall flag, type, and photo counts. With fetchFullDetails on, each row also carries the full body text (plain + HTML), author, all publication dates, reading time, main tag, geo zones, and photo URLs.

📦 Output sample

{
  "type": "article",
  "articleId": "47c8fb5f-f25b-48b5-9b0f-04c657749bae",
  "title": "Fortes tensions à Rennes et interpellations… revivez la matinée de blocage des lycées en Ille-et-Vilaine",
  "url": "https://www.ouest-france.fr/societe/manifestation/direct-la-mobilisation-lyceenne-se-poursuit-ce-vendredi-a-rennes-47c8fb5f-f25b-48b5-9b0f-04c657749bae",
  "lead": "Après les barrages, affrontements et dégradations de la veille, la mobilisation lycéenne se poursuit, ce vendredi 2 octobre 2026...",
  "body": "Après les barrages, affrontements et dégradations de la veille, la mobilisation lycéenne se poursuit...",
  "bodyHtml": "Après les barrages, affrontements et dégradations de la veille...",
  "author": "Anthony Chaud, Ludivine Doméon, avec les rédactions Ouest-France",
  "datePublished": "2026-10-02T05:40:42.000Z",
  "firstPublicationDate": "2026-10-02T05:40:42Z",
  "lastPublicationDate": "2026-10-02T11:39:49Z",
  "lastUpdatedDate": "2026-10-02T13:23:47Z",
  "categories": ["École collège lycée", "Manifestation", "Société", "Éducation"],
  "source": "of",
  "paywall": false,
  "articleType": "GENERAL",
  "isLive": true,
  "photos": [{ "url": "https://media.ouest-france.fr/v1/pictures/...", "credit": null, "caption": null }],
  "nbPhotos": 1,
  "nbVideos": 0,
  "readingTimeMinutes": 2,
  "mainTag": "Manifestation",
  "zonesGeo": ["Fougères", "Bretagne", "Rennes", "Saint-Malo", "Vitré", "Ille-et-Vilaine", "Régions"],
  "fetchedFullDetails": true
}

🗂 Key output fields

Field	Description
articleId	Ouest-France article UUID (the Algolia objectID)
title	Article headline
url	Full ouest-france.fr article URL
lead	Article lead paragraph (chapeau)
body	Full article text, HTML stripped (only with fetchFullDetails)
bodyHtml	Full article body as HTML (only with fetchFullDetails)
author	Byline / signature (only with fetchFullDetails)
datePublished	Publication date (ISO 8601)
firstPublicationDate	First publication timestamp (only with fetchFullDetails)
lastPublicationDate	Last publication timestamp (only with fetchFullDetails)
lastUpdatedDate	Last update timestamp (only with fetchFullDetails)
categories	Topic categories (e.g. Société, Éducation)
source	Content source (usually of for Ouest-France)
paywall	true if the article is behind a paywall (CONTENU_PAYANT)
articleType	Article type (GENERAL, LOCAL, CONTENU_PAYANT, live, etc.)
isLive	true for live-blog articles
photos	Array of photo objects with url, credit, caption
nbPhotos / nbVideos	Media counts
readingTimeMinutes	Estimated reading time (only with fetchFullDetails)
mainTag	Primary tag (only with fetchFullDetails)
zonesGeo	Geographic zones the article covers
fetchedFullDetails	Whether full content was fetched for this row

❓ FAQ

Why does the actor use the mobile API instead of scraping the website? The ouest-france.fr website is behind Akamai bot protection and returns 403 to non-browser HTTP clients. The Android app's JSON API has no such protection and returns the same data in a cleaner, structured format. This makes the actor faster, cheaper, and more reliable than a headless-browser approach.

Why are some article bodies short? Articles marked CONTENU_PAYANT (paywall: true) are behind Ouest-France's subscriber paywall. The API returns only the lead paragraph for these, not the full body. Free articles return the complete text. The paywall and articleType fields tell you which is which.

Do I need a proxy? No. The mobile JSON API returns 200 with a plain User-Agent. A proxy is only useful if you need to mask your IP for volume reasons, not for access.

How many articles can I scrape? The Algolia articles index holds over 1.4 million articles. maxItems caps each run. Free-plan users are capped at 5 articles per run.

Can I search for articles by date or region? The free-text query supports whatever Algolia search syntax Ouest-France exposes. Geographic filtering comes through the zonesGeo field on each result. For date filtering, sort by datePublished in post-processing.

💬 Support

Found a bug or want a feature? Open an issue on the Apify Console and we'll take a look.

🛠 Additional services

Need a custom integration, a specific filter, or a larger volume? Reach out via the Apify Console — we build tailored scraping pipelines on request.

🔎 Explore more scrapers

Looking for other news or directory scrapers? Check the full portfolio on Apify.

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⚠️ Disclaimer

This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Ouest-France, SIPA Ouest-France, or any of their subsidiaries or affiliates. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

The scraper accesses only publicly available article data via Ouest-France's mobile API — no authenticated endpoints, subscriber-only content, or content behind a login. Paywalled articles return only their publicly visible lead paragraph. Users are responsible for ensuring their use complies with Ouest-France's Terms of Service, applicable data-protection law (GDPR, CCPA, etc.), and any contractual obligations of their own organisation.

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