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Podcast Directory

Tier: 2-Intermediate

In the GitHub Status app you learned how to use the Request package to scrape information from a web page. The Podcast Directory continues this process and introduces you to another web scraping package - Puppeteer.

Although Request is a useful package it isn't built specifically for web scraping like Puppeteer. As you gain experience with web scraping you'll find that there are web sites and applications where web scraping is made easier by using a tool like Puppeteer that is specifically built for scaping.

It is important to note that while web scraping has its place, the use of an API or a data source such as a file or database is always preferable to scraping information from a page. The reason being that even minor changes to page styling can render your web scraper inoperable. For example, the change of a CSS class name your scraping logic is dependent on.

The goal of the Podcast Directory app is to pull the most recent episodes of the Javascript Jabber and Techpoint Charlie podcasts from Podbean and create a new page that creates a combined list of episodes, sorted by broadcast date.

User Stories

  • User can see a table of podcast episodes
  • User can see rows in this table showing a clickable episode icon, the title of the episode, and the date it was originally broadcast.
  • User can scroll through the list
  • User can click on the episode icon to display that episodes page on the Podbean web site.

Bonus features

  • User can see rows in the episode table have alternating background colors.
  • User can see a summary above the episode table showing the number of episodes for each podcast.
  • User can see a clickable checkbox next to each podcast name in the summary above the episode table.
  • User can click the radio button next to the podcast name to include episodes for that podcast in the episode table.

Useful links and resources

// puptest.js
const puppeteer = require('puppeteer');

const run = async () => {
  return new Promise(async (resolve, reject) => {
    try {
      const browser = await puppeteer.launch();
      const page = await browser.newPage();
      await page.goto("https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/d4un8-57595/JavaScript-Jabber-Podcast");
      let episodeLinks = await page.evaluate(() => {
        return Array.from(document.querySelectorAll('a.title')).map((item) => ({
            url:  item.getAttribute('href'),
            text: item.innerText
          })
        );
      });
      browser.close();
      return resolve(episodeLinks);
    } catch (e) {
      return reject(e);
    }
  })
}

run()
.then(console.log)
.catch(console.error);
  • When you have completed this project check out the advanced project MyPodcast Library

Example projects

N/a