A tool for getting public website content using a browser engine or http get.
There are websites that rely on javascript frameworks (like jQuery or AngularJS) and process dynamic data after the page load. For these type of websites, you should use a browser to interpert the javascript code and then get the data. Which is what this tool does: provides methods for this task using SlimerJS (Firefox's Gecko engine) in the background.
$ npm install scrapr --save
- url: string (required)
- loadImages: bool (optional)
Opens a browser under the hood, waits for the page load and then gets the data. Returns a promise with a jQuery object ($). This is useful if the page relies on javascript and updates the html content after the page load.
var scrapr = require('scrapr');
// Opens a browser (loading images), goes to google, gets html tag, finds "feeling lucky button" and prints it
scrapr.getHtmlViaBrowser('http://www.google.com', true).then(function($){
$('html').filter(function(){
var htmlTag = $(this);
var luckyButton = htmlTag.find('input.lsb')[0];
console.log($(luckyButton).attr('value'));
});
}, function(err){
console.log('Could not request page. Error: ' + err.message);
});
- url: string (required)
Makes a direct GET request to the url and returns a promise with a jQuery object ($). This is useful if the page does not rely on javascript and updates the html content after the page load.
var scrapr = require('scrapr');
// Gets google's html tag, finds "feeling lucky button" and prints it
scrapr.getHtmlViaRequest('http://www.google.com').then(function($){
$('html').filter(function(){
var htmlTag = $(this);
var luckyButton = htmlTag.find('input.lsb')[0];
console.log($(luckyButton).attr('value'));
});
}, function(err){
console.log('Could not request page. Error: ' + err.message);
});
- arrayToParse: string (required)
- length: number (required)
A helper function that splits a large array into slices with the specified length. Useful for throttling large amount of requests while doing parallel requests. For example: scraping 50 pages into slices of 5 with a minute interval for each slice.
var scrapr = require('scrapr');
// Creates an array of 50 elements and then split it into slices of 6
var largeArray = new Array();
for(var i = 0; i < 50; i++) {
largeArray.push(i);
}
var slices = scrapr.parseListIntoSlices(largeArray, 6);
console.log(slices);
Renan Caldas de Oliveira