Develop Reference

How to select specific button in puppeteer

So I'm building a program that scrapes Poshmark webpages and extracts the usernames of each seller on the page!
I want it to go through every page using the 'next' button, but theres 6 buttons all with the same class name...
Heres the link: https://poshmark.com/category/Men-Jackets_&_Coats?sort_by=like_count&all_size=true&my_size=false
(In my google chrome this page has an infinite scroll (hence the scrollToBottom async function i started writing) but i realized inside puppeteer's chrome it has 'next page' buttons.)
The window displays page 1-5 and then the 'next page' button.
The problem is that all of the buttons share the same html class name, so I'm confused on how to differentiate.
const e = require('express');
const puppeteer = require('puppeteer');
const url = "https://poshmark.com/category/Men-Jackets_&_Coats?sort_by=like_count&all_size=true&my_size=false";
let usernames = [];
const initItemArea = async (page) => {
const itemArea = await page.evaluate(() => {
return Array.from(document.querySelectorAll('.tc--g.m--l--1.ellipses')).map(x => x.textContent);
});
}
const pushToArray = async (itemArea, page) => {
itemArea.forEach(function (element) {
//console.log('username: ', $(element).text());
usernames.push(element);
});
};
const scrollToBottom = async (itemArea, page) => {
while (true) {
previousHeight = await page.evaluate('document.body.scrollHeight');
await page.evaluate('window.scrollTo(0, document.body.scrollHeight)');
await page.waitForFunction(`document.body.scrollHeight > ${previousHeight}`);
await new Promise((resolve) => setTimeout(resolve, 1000));
await page.screenshot({path : "ss.png"})
}
};
const gotoNextPage = async (page) => {
await page.waitForSelector(".button.btn.btn--pagination");
const nextButton = await page.evaluate((page) => {
document.querySelector(".button.btn.btn--pagination")
});
await page.click(nextButton);
console.log('Next Page Loading')
};
async function main() {
const client = await puppeteer.launch({
headless: false,
executablePath: "/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome"
});
const page = await client.newPage();
await page.goto(url);
await page.waitForSelector(".tc--g.m--l--1.ellipses");
const itemArea = await page.evaluate(() => {
return Array.from(document.querySelectorAll('.tc--g.m--l--1.ellipses')).map(x => x.textContent);
});
gotoNextPage(page)
};
main();
Currently, my gotoNextPage function doesnt even find the button, so i thought i'd entered the selector wrong...
Then when I went to find the selector, I realized all buttons have the same one anyway...
My html knowledge is basically nonexistent, but I want to finish this project out. All help is very appreciated.
Bonus: my initPageArea function doesn't work when I call as a function like that, so I hardcoded it into main()...
I'll be diving deep into this problem later on, as I've seen it before, but any quick answers / direction would be awesome.
Thanks a lot.

you can try selecting the buttons using their position in the page.
For example, you can select the first button using the following CSS selector:
.button.btn.btn--pagination:nth-child(1)
to select the second button:
.button.btn.btn--pagination:nth-child(2)
Got the idea? :)
you can refactor your gotoNextPage function to use this approach, consider this example:
const gotoNextPage = async (page, buttonIndex) => {
await page.waitForSelector(".button.btn.btn--pagination");
// Select the button using its position in the page
const nextButton = await page.evaluate((buttonIndex) => {
return document.querySelector(`.button.btn.btn--pagination:nth-child(${buttonIndex})`);
}, buttonIndex);
// Click on the button
await page.click(nextButton);
console.log("Next Page Loading");
};

Whenever you're messing with buttons and scroll, it's a good idea to think about where the data is coming from. It's usually being delivered to the front-end via a JSON API, so you might as well try to hit that API directly rather than mess with the DOM.
const url = maxId => `https://poshmark.com/vm-rest/channel_groups/category/channels/category/collections/post?request={%22filters%22:{%22department%22:%22Men%22,%22category_v2%22:%22Jackets_%26_Coats%22,%22inventory_status%22:[%22available%22]},%22sort_by%22:%22like_count%22,%22facets%22:[%22color%22,%22brand%22,%22size%22],%22experience%22:%22all%22,%22sizeSystem%22:%22us%22,%22max_id%22:%22${maxId}%22,%22count%22:%2248%22}&summarize=true&pm_version=226.1.0`;
(async () => {
const usernames = [];
for (let maxId = 1; maxId < 5 /* for testing */; maxId++) {
const response = await fetch(url(maxId)); // Node 18 or install node-fetch
if (!response.ok) {
throw Error(response.statusText);
}
const payload = await response.json();
if (payload.error) {
break;
}
usernames.push(...payload.data.map(e => e.creator_username));
}
console.log(usernames.slice(0, 10));
console.log("usernames.length", usernames.length);
})()
.catch(err => console.error(err));
The response blob has a ton of additional data.
I would add a significant delay between requests if I were to use code like this to avoid rate limiting/blocking.
If you're set on Puppeteer, something like this should work as well, although it's slower and I didn't have time to run to the end of the 5k (or more?) users:
const puppeteer = require("puppeteer"); // ^19.1.0
const url = "Your URL";
let browser;
(async () => {
browser = await puppeteer.launch();
const [page] = await browser.pages();
await page.goto(url, {waitUntil: "domcontentloaded"});
const usernames = [];
const sel = ".tc--g.m--l--1.ellipses";
for (;;) {
try {
await page.waitForSelector(sel);
const users = await page.$$eval(sel, els => {
const text = els.map(e => e.textContent);
els.forEach(el => el.remove());
return text;
});
console.log(users); // optional for debugging
usernames.push(...users);
await page.$$eval(
".btn--pagination",
els => els.find(el => el.textContent.includes("Next")).click()
);
}
catch (err) {
break;
}
}
console.log(usernames);
console.log(usernames.length);
})()
.catch(err => console.error(err))
.finally(() => browser?.close());
I don't think navigations are triggered by the "Next" button, so my strategy for detecting when a page transition has occurred involves destroying the current set of elements after scraping the usernames, then waiting until the next batch shows up. This may seem inelegant, but it's easy to implement and seems reliable, not making assumptions about the usernames themselves.
It's also possible to use Puppeteer and make or intercept API requests, armed with a fresh cookie. This is sort of halfway between the two extremes shown above. For example:
const puppeteer = require("puppeteer");
const url = "Your URL";
let browser;
(async () => {
browser = await puppeteer.launch();
const [page] = await browser.pages();
await page.goto(url, {waitUntil: "domcontentloaded"});
const usernames = await page.evaluate(async () => {
const url = maxId => `https://poshmark.com/vm-rest/channel_groups/category/channels/category/collections/post?request={%22filters%22:{%22department%22:%22Men%22,%22category_v2%22:%22Jackets_%26_Coats%22,%22inventory_status%22:[%22available%22]},%22sort_by%22:%22like_count%22,%22facets%22:[%22color%22,%22brand%22,%22size%22],%22experience%22:%22all%22,%22sizeSystem%22:%22us%22,%22max_id%22:%22${maxId}%22,%22count%22:%2248%22}&summarize=true&pm_version=226.1.0`;
const usernames = [];
try {
for (let maxId = 1; maxId < 5 /* for testing */; maxId++) {
const response = await fetch(url(maxId)); // node 18 or install node-fetch
if (!response.ok) {
throw Error(response.statusText);
break;
}
const json = await response.json();
if (json.error) {
break;
}
usernames.push(...json.data.map(e => e.creator_username));
}
}
catch (err) {
console.error(err);
}
return usernames;
});
console.log(usernames);
console.log("usernames.length", usernames.length);
})()
.catch(err => console.error(err))
.finally(() => browser?.close());
The above code limits to 4 requests to keep it simple and easy to validate.
Blocking images and other unnecessary resources can help speed the Puppeteer versions up, left as an exercise (or just use the direct fetch version shown at top).

I want to get the urls of each home from the attribute content

const puppeteer = require("puppeteer");
const cheerio = require("cheerio");
const url = "https://www.airbnb.co.in/s/Haridwar--Uttarakhand/homes?tab_id=home_tab&refinement_paths%5B%5D=%2Fhomes&flexible_trip_lengths%5B%5D=one_week&price_filter_input_type=0&price_filter_num_nights=5&l2_property_type_ids%5B%5D=1&search_type=autocomplete_click&query=Haridwar%2C%20Uttarakhand&place_id=ChIJyVfuuA5HCTkR8_VApnaRRE4&date_picker_type=calendar&source=structured_search_input_header";
async function scrapHomesPage(url)
{
try
{
const browser = await puppeteer.launch({headless:false});
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto(url);
const html = await page.evaluate(()=> document.body.innerHTML);
const $ = cheerio.load(html);
const homes = $('[itemprop="url"]').map((i, element) => $(element).attr("content")).get();
console.log(homes);
}
catch(err)
{
console.error(err);
}
}
scrapHomesPage("https://www.airbnb.co.in/s/Haridwar--Uttarakhand/homes?tab_id=home_tab&refinement_paths%5B%5D=%2Fhomes&flexible_trip_lengths%5B%5D=one_week&price_filter_input_type=0&price_filter_num_nights=5&l2_property_type_ids%5B%5D=1&search_type=autocomplete_click&query=Haridwar%2C%20Uttarakhand&place_id=ChIJyVfuuA5HCTkR8_VApnaRRE4&date_picker_type=calendar&source=structured_search_input_header");
I tried to add everything I could to wait for the page to load all the contents. I tried wait for selectors etc. I am always getting an empty array instead I should get an array with all the links of each home listed on the Airbnb site for that particular location.

I don't see any reason to use Cheerio here. It's just another layer of indirection to get the data you want, involving an extra dependency, a whole second parse of the page and the potential for bugs when the page goes out of sync with the HTML snapshot you've created. If you do need to use it, you can use page.content() instead of page.evaluate(() => document.body.innerHTML).
As for the main problem, you appear to be missing a call to page.waitForSelector:
const puppeteer = require("puppeteer"); // ^19.0.0
const url = "your url";
let browser;
(async () => {
browser = await puppeteer.launch();
const [page] = await browser.pages();
await page.goto(url, {waitUntil: "domcontentloaded"});
await page.waitForSelector('[itemprop="url"]');
const content = await page.$$eval(
'[itemprop="url"]',
els => els.map(el => el.getAttribute("content"))
);
console.log(content);
})()
.catch(err => console.error(err))
.finally(() => browser?.close());

Puppeteer not able to fetch data for some reason

I have created a react app that gives the following output as HTML:
import './App.css';
import Home from './Home';
function App() {
return (
<div className="Apps">
<strong>"root1"</strong>
<div className="content">
<p>"root"</p>
</div>
</div>
);
}
export default App;
My goal here is to basically retrieve "root1" from the <strong> tag under the Apps class. I have written the following code but it doesn't retrieve the data:
const puppeteer = require("puppeteer")
const fs = require("fs/promises")
async function start() {
const browser = await puppeteer.launch()
const page = await browser.newPage()
await page.goto("https://.herokuapp.com/")
const names = await page.evaluate(() => {
return Array.from(document.querySelectorAll(".Apps strong"), els => els.map(el => el.textContent))
})
await fs.writeFile("names.txt", names.join("\r\n"))
await browser.close()
}
start()
When I run the script, a new text file is created but it is empty instead of showing "root1". Can someone help me? Thanks for your time!

The correct answer was given to me by #ggorlen, it should be like this:
const puppeteer = require("puppeteer")
const fs = require("fs/promises")
async function start() {
const browser = await puppeteer.launch()
const page = await browser.newPage()
await page.goto("url")
const names = await page.evaluate(() => {
return Array.from(document.querySelectorAll(".Apps strong"), el => el.textContent)
})
await fs.writeFile("names.txt", names.join("\r\n"))
await browser.close()
}
start()
Thanks!

When I try to web scrape a dynamic website, i get back an empty array

I am trying to web scrape a dynamic website with puppeteer, using this code:
const puppeteer = require('puppeteer');
async function getTokoPedia(){
const browser = await puppeteer.launch({ headless: false }); // for test disable the headlels mode,
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.setViewport({ width: 1000, height: 926 });
await page.goto("https://store.401games.ca/collections/pokemon-singles",{waitUntil: 'networkidle2'});
console.log("start evaluate javascript")
var productNames = await page.evaluate(()=>{
var div = document.querySelectorAll('.info-container');
console.log(div) // console.log inside evaluate, will show on browser console not on node console
var productnames = []
div.forEach(element => {
var price = element.querySelector(' .fs-result-page-3sdl0h')
if(price != null){
productnames.push(price.innerText);
}
});
return productnames
})
console.log(productNames)
browser.close()
}
getTokoPedia();
However, upon running it, I get back an empty array. How can I fix this?

Two problems:
The elements you want are in a shadow root, so you have to pierce the root as described in Puppeteer not giving accurate HTML code for page with shadow roots.
The cards lazy-load, so you'd have to scroll down to be able to populate their data into the DOM.
But there's an easier way to get the initial set of data, which is in the static HTML as a JSON blob in var meta = {"products":...};. You can scrape it with a regex, as described in this tutorial.
Here's an example showing both approaches:
const puppeteer = require("puppeteer"); // ^14.1.1
let browser;
(async () => {
browser = await puppeteer.launch({headless: true});
const [page] = await browser.pages();
const url = "https://store.401games.ca/collections/pokemon-singles";
await page.goto(url, {waitUntil: "domcontentloaded"});
// here's the hard way for illustration:
const el = await page.waitForSelector("#fast-simon-serp-app");
await page.waitForFunction(({shadowRoot}) =>
shadowRoot.querySelector(".product-card .title")
, {}, el);
const items = await el.evaluate(({shadowRoot}) =>
[...shadowRoot.querySelectorAll(".product-card")]
.map(e => ({
title: e.querySelector(".title")?.textContent,
price: e.querySelector(".price")?.textContent,
}))
);
console.log(items); // just the first 6 or so
// TODO scroll the page to get the rest;
// I didn't bother implementing that...
// ...or do it the easy way:
const html = await page.content();
const pat = /^[\t ]*var meta = ({"products":[^\n]+);$/m;
const data = JSON.parse(html.match(pat)[1]);
console.log(JSON.stringify(data, null, 2));
})()
.catch(err => console.error(err))
.finally(() => browser?.close())
;
At this point, since we're not dealing with anything but the static HTML, you can dump Puppeteer and use axios or fetch to get the data more efficiently:
const axios = require("axios");
axios.get("https://store.401games.ca/collections/pokemon-singles")
.then(({data: body}) => {
const pat = /^[\t ]*var meta = ({"products":[^\n]+);$/m;
const data = JSON.parse(body.match(pat)[1]);
console.log(JSON.stringify(data, null, 2));
})
.catch(err => console.error(err))
;
Now, the data.products array contains 50 but the UI shows 26466 results. If you want more than those initial items from the static HTML's var meta, which appears to be the same on all 1000+ pages, I suggest using the API. A URL looks like https://ultimate-dot-acp-magento.appspot.com/categories_navigation?request_source=v-next&src=v-next&UUID=d3cae9c0-9d9b-4fe3-ad81-873270df14b5&uuid=d3cae9c0-9d9b-4fe3-ad81-873270df14b5&store_id=17041809&cdn_cache_key=1654217982&api_type=json&category_id=269055623355&facets_required=1&products_per_page=5000&page_num=1&with_product_attributes=true. You can see there are ids and keys that probably protect against usage by parties other than the site, but I didn't see any change other than cdn_cache_key after a few tries. I'm not sure how long a URL is valid, but while it is, you can set products_per_page=1000 for example, then move page_num=1 forward 27 times or so. This gets you all of the data while avoiding all of the difficulties of scraping from the page itself.
Here's a pessimistic approach that uses Puppeteer to get an up-to-date URL, in case a URL goes stale:
const axios = require("axios");
const puppeteer = require("puppeteer"); // ^14.1.1
let browser;
(async () => {
browser = await puppeteer.launch({headless: true});
const [page] = await browser.pages();
const url = "https://store.401games.ca/collections/pokemon-singles";
const reqP = page.waitForRequest(res =>
res.url()
.startsWith("https://ultimate-dot-acp-magento.appspot.com/categories_navigation")
);
await page.goto(url, {waitUntil: "domcontentloaded"});
const req = await reqP;
const apiUrl = req
.url()
.replace(/(?<=products_per_page=)(\d+)/, 1000);
const {data} = await axios.get(apiUrl);
console.log(JSON.stringify(data, null, 2));
})()
.catch(err => console.error(err))
.finally(() => browser?.close())
;
And tossing in the loop:
const axios = require("axios");
const fs = require("fs").promises;
const puppeteer = require("puppeteer"); // ^14.1.1
let browser;
(async () => {
browser = await puppeteer.launch({headless: true});
const [page] = await browser.pages();
const url = "https://store.401games.ca/collections/pokemon-singles";
const reqP = page.waitForRequest(res =>
res.url()
.startsWith("https://ultimate-dot-acp-magento.appspot.com/categories_navigation")
);
await page.goto(url, {waitUntil: "domcontentloaded"});
const req = await reqP;
const apiUrl = req
.url()
.replace(/(?<=products_per_page=)(\d+)/, 1000);
const items = [];
for (let i = 1;; i++) {
const pageUrl = apiUrl.replace(/(?<=page_num=)(\d+)/, i);
const response = await axios.get(pageUrl);
if (response.status !== 200 ||
items.length >= response.data.total_results) {
break;
}
items.push(...response.data.items);
}
await fs.writeFile("data.json", JSON.stringify(items));
console.log(items.slice(0, 10));
console.log(items.length);
})()
.catch(err => console.error(err))
.finally(() => browser?.close())
;
This hammers the site, pulling a ton of data in a short amount of time, so consider this script for educational purposes, or modify it to throttle your requests way back.

Scraper (puppeteer) doesn't map over my array - JavaScript / React

I have written a web scraper with puppeteer. It screens jobs from a job portal. I can screen title, position and image.
The created array from my scraper looks like this:
[{
"id": "2018-12-03T14:12:03Z",
"position": "Frontend Entwickler React (w/m)",
"company": "Muster AG",
"image": "https://www.stepstone.de/upload_de/logo/blabla.gif",
"date": "2018-12-03T14:12:03Z",
"href": "https://www.stepstone.de/stellenangebote--Frontend-Entwickler"
}]
Here is the code of my scraper.js:
const fs = require('fs')
const path = require('path')
const puppeteer = require('puppeteer')
;(async () => {
const browser = await puppeteer.launch()
const page = await browser.newPage()
await page.goto(
'https://www.stepstone.de/5/ergebnisliste.html?stf=freeText&ns=1&qs=%5B%7B%22id%22%3A%22231794%22%2C%22description%22%3A%22Frontend-Entwickler%2Fin%22%2C%22type%22%3A%22jd%22%7D%2C%7B%22id%22%3A%22300000115%22%2C%22description%22%3A%22Deutschland%22%2C%22type%22%3A%22geocity%22%7D%5D&companyID=0&cityID=300000115&sourceOfTheSearchField=homepagemex%3Ageneral&searchOrigin=Homepage_top-search&ke=Frontend-Entwickler%2Fin&ws=Deutschland&ra=30'
)
const stepstone = await page.evaluate(() => {
return Array.from(document.querySelectorAll('.job-element'), card => {
const id = card.querySelector('time').getAttribute('datetime')
const href = card
.querySelector('.job-element__body > a')
.getAttribute('href')
const position = card
.querySelector('.job-element__body__title')
.textContent.trim()
.replace(/^(.{45}[^\s]*).*/, '$1')
const company = card
.querySelector('.job-element__body__company')
.textContent.trim()
.replace(/^(.{20}[^\s]*).*/, '$1')
const image_element = card.querySelector('.job-element__logo img')
const image = image_element.dataset.src
? `https://www.stepstone.de${image_element.dataset.src}`
: image_element.src
const date = card.querySelector('time').getAttribute('datetime')
return {
id,
position,
company,
image,
date,
href
}
})
})
fs.writeFile(
path.join(__dirname, 'src/stepstone.json'),
JSON.stringify(stepstone),
err => {
if (err) {
console.error(err)
} else {
console.log('Great, it worked!')
}
}
)
await browser.close()
})()
My Approach: After scraping the title, position, etc. I also want to include the job details. So I told my scraper to go to the href link of each job item in the array where this information is stored.
And from that link grab the job details classes just like above. So I tried to map over the above array and tell the scraper to grab the items from each href link, like this:
stepstone.map(async stone => {
const page = await browser.newPage()
await page.goto(stone.href)
const details = await page.evaluate(() => {
return document.querySelector('card__body')
})
return {
...stone,
details
}
})
My Problem:
However, the JSON file does not update with the "details" key (which shall hold information from 'card__body').
Any suggestions?
Thx!