Scraping data from HTML pages is a pretty straightforward process. However, this is not the case with pages that use JavaScript. If the page you’re trying to crawl employs JavaScript, the data is obtained by the browser after the rendering process. Normal scraping cannot do this rendering part and will return with no data. Hence, scraping JavaScript rendered pages is significantly more complicated compared to the plain HTML pages. However, if you are in need of data from a JavaScript rendered webpage, you can use our customized and managed web scraping solutions to get the data without going through the complications associated with web scraping.
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Scraping JavaScript rendered webpages
There are different ways to tackle the JavaScript rendered webpages issue and the easiest is to employ a web browser to render the page first. In this method, the web crawler is equipped with a browser that can do the rendering part before it can extract the data. The browser is then controlled by an automation tool like Selenium to navigate to different pages. This method is however, not that efficient and there is a possibility of errors and bottlenecks every now and then.
Other methods include extracting the data by using a custom program written specifically to render and extract data from the specific page to be scraped. This is significantly complicated than the browser method, but the extraction is smoother and faster without errors.
The method used for different webpages varies according to the requirement, like the frequency of crawl, use case, latency and other similar factors.
Why use PromptCloud to crawl JavaScript rendered webpages
Extracting data from the web is a niche process that demands high end technical skills and an extensive tech stack. Even more so if the page you need to crawl uses dynamic coding practices like JavaScript. If your company doesn’t have the necessary resources to carry out the data extraction process, it’s better to outsource it to a DaaS (Data as a Service) provider like PromptCloud. We take complete ownership of the extraction process and deliver the data in a ready to use format. The only task left for you to do would be to plug it into your data analytics system or database.
Data delivery
The data delivery formats and methods are just as customizable and you can choose between XML, JSON and CSV for data formats. The data can be is delivered via our REST API or uploaded to your , Amazon S3, Dropbox, Box or FTP account, depending on your preferred method.
