To start web scraping using Node.js, you'll first need to set up your environment. Install Yarn by running the command brew install yarn if you're on a Mac or use your package manager of choice for other operating systems.
Next, create a new project directory and navigate into it with the terminal. Initialize a new Yarn project by running the command yarn init. Answer the questions to provide metadata for your project.
When it comes to web scraping using Node.js, you have two popular libraries to choose from: Cheerio and Puppeteer. Here's a brief comparison of the two:
Cheerio: This is a fast, flexible, and lightweight library perfect for parsing HTML and XML documents. It's a great choice when you only need to scrape static web pages.
Puppeteer: This Node library developed by the Chrome team provides a high-level API to control a headless Chrome browser instance. It's ideal for scraping dynamic content or websites that require JavaScript execution.
Let's use Cheerio for our example. First, install the package using yarn add cheerio axios. Create an index.js file and import Cheerio:
const cheerio = require('cheerio');
const axios = require('axios');
const scrapeData = async () => {
const response = await axios.get('https://example.com');
const htmlContent = response.data;
const $ = cheerio.load(htmlContent);
const scrapedData = [];
$('div.entry').each((index, element) => {
const title = $(element).find('h1.title').text();
const summary = $(element).find('p.summary').text();
scrapedData.push({ title, summary });
});
console.log(scrapedData);
};
scrapeData();
If you need to scrape dynamic content, use Puppeteer. First, install the package using yarn add puppeteer. Create an index.js file and import Puppeteer:
const puppeteer = require('puppeteer');
const scrapeData = async () => {
const browser = await puppeteer.launch();
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto('https://example.com');
const scrapedData = await page.$$eval('div.entry', entries => {
return entries.map(entry => {
const title = entry.querySelector('h1.title').textContent;
const summary = entry.querySelector('p.summary').textContent;
return { title, summary };
});
});
console.log(scrapedData);
await browser.close();
};
scrapeData();
After collecting your scraped data, process it and save the results as needed.
