unclecode / unclecode/crawl4ai
[Bug]: BFSDeepCrawlStrategy re-scans the full level for parent lookup (O(n²)); BestFirstCrawlingStrategy can enqueue the same URL twice
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Description
crawl4ai version
0.9.3
Expected Behavior
- Per-level bookkeeping in BFSDeepCrawlStrategy (matching a fetched result back to its parent URL) should scale linearly with the number of URLs in a level.
- A URL discovered by multiple pages in BestFirstCrawlingStrategy should be scored and queued once, not once per inbound link.
Current Behavior
- O(n²) parent lookup -
deep_crawling/bfs_strategy.py,_arun_batchand_arun_stream:
parent_url = next((parent for (u, parent) in current_level if u == url), None)
This linearly re-scans the entire current_level list once per fetched result. For a level of N URLs this is O(N²) pure-Python work with no I/O involved - a page with high fan-out (hundreds/thousands of links) makes this bookkeeping step dominate.
- Duplicate enqueue -
deep_crawling/bff_strategy.py,link_discovery/_arun_best_first:
visitedis only populated when an item is dequeued, not when it's discovered, solink_discovery's dedup check(if base_url in visited: continue) doesn't stop the same URL being pushed onto the priority queue twice if two different pages link to it before it's first processed. The duplicate is silently dropped later at dequeue time, so output is still correct, but it was scored and queued for nothing.
Is this reproducible?
Yes
Inputs Causing the Bug
- URL(s): Any site with high link fan-out per page, or shared links between sibling pages
- Settings used: BFSDeepCrawlStrategy(max_depth=2, max_pages=1000+) for issue 1; BestFirstCrawlingStrategy(...) with a url_scorer for issue 2
Steps to Reproduce
1. Run `BFSDeepCrawlStrategy` against a page with hundreds+ of internal links at depth 1; profile `_arun_batch`'s per-result loop - the parent lookup dominates as level size grows.
2. Run `BestFirstCrawlingStrategy` against a small site where ≥2 pages link to the same third page before it's first crawled; log `queue.qsize()` or inspect enqueued items - the shared URL appears twice.
Code snippets
OS
macOS 26.6.2 (Darwin 25.6.0)
Python version
3.13.12
Browser
No response
Browser version
No response
Error logs & Screenshots (if applicable)
No response
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by reading deep_crawling/bfs_strategy.py in _arun_batch and _arun_stream, then deep_crawling/bff_strategy.py in link_discovery and _arun_best_first. Reproduce the high-fan-out BFS case and the shared-link BestFirst case described in the issue. Done means parent matching scales linearly and each discovered URL is scored and queued only once.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- python
- Domain
- backend, performance
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Active
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 55/100