

If you are using Ubuntu 18.04, check the ‘Debian Dependencies’ dropdown inside the ‘Chrome headless doesn’t launch on UNIX’ section of Puppeteer’s troubleshooting docs. On Linux machines, Puppeteer might require some additional dependencies. This command installs both Puppeteer and a version of Chromium that the Puppeteer team knows will work with their API. npm will save this output as your package.json file. "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" & exit 1" Your output will look something like this: Alternately, you can pass the y flag to npm- npm init -y-and it will submit all the default values for you. Make sure to press ENTER and leave the default values in place when prompted for entry point: and test command. You can press ENTER to every prompt, or you can add personalized descriptions. First initialize npm in order to create a packages.json file, which will manage your project’s dependencies and metadata.
#Puppetry basics install
We need to install one package using npm, or the node package manager. You will run all subsequent commands from this directory. npm comes preinstalled with Node.js, so you don’t need to install it.Ĭreate a folder for this project and then move inside:

This tutorial requires just one dependency, and you will install it using Node.js’s default package manager npm. First, you will create a project root directory and then install the required dependencies. With Node.js installed, you can begin setting up your web scraper. You can follow this guide to install Node.js on macOS or Ubuntu 18.04, or you can follow this guide to install Node.js on Ubuntu 18.04 using a PPA. This tutorial was tested on Node.js version 12.18.3 and npm version 6.14.6. Node.js installed on your development machine.Scraping any other domain falls outside the scope of this tutorial. This tutorial scrapes a special website,, which was specifically designed to test scraper applications. They also differ based on your location, the data’s location, and the website in question. Warning: The ethics and legality of web scraping are very complex and constantly evolving. In the remaining steps, you will filter your scraping by book category and then save your data as a JSON file. In the next two steps, you will scrape all the books on a single page of books.toscrape and then all the books across multiple pages.
#Puppetry basics code
First, you will code your app to open Chromium and load a special website designed as a web-scraping sandbox:. Your app will grow in complexity as you progress. In this tutorial, you will build a web scraping application using Node.js and Puppeteer. Scraping is also a solution when data collection is desired or needed but the website does not provide an API.
#Puppetry basics manual
Primarily, it makes data collection much faster by eliminating the manual data-gathering process. There are many reasons why you might want to scrape data.

The process typically deploys a “crawler” that automatically surfs the web and scrapes data from selected pages. Web scraping is the process of automating data collection from the web.

The author selected the Free and Open Source Fund to receive a donation as part of the Write for DOnations program.
