Imagine building an e-commerce platform where we can easily fetch product data in real-time from major stores like eBay, Amazon, and Flipkart. Sure...
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Thanks for this. I was waiting for some this kind of explanation!
I delighted to know that you found this helpful!
Hey guys,Let me know your thoughts on this...
Great!
I'm using this for web scraping. very nice and detail explanation
Helpful and thanks di for sharing this😊🤩
Most welcome priyaaa!
So helpful Niharikaa!
amazing
Awesome explanation!
Excited to try this out!
Oh, where do I even start? "Web scraping made easy"? With Puppeteer? Really? Sure, if "easy" means spinning up a headless browser and having a memory footprint that rivals Chrome’s absurd hunger for RAM. Let’s be real: Puppeteer is like bringing a bulldozer to plant a flower. Overkill much? Not to mention that Puppeteer scrapes are notoriously fragile. One small change in the target site's structure, and boom! Your scraper falls apart like a house of cards.
And let's not get started on performance. Spawning a browser instance just to scrape HTML when simpler, more efficient solutions like Cheerio or Axios exist is like saying, "Nah, I don't care about scaling or resources." I mean, when you want to parse some basic HTML, using Puppeteer is like trying to hack an egg with a chainsaw. It works, but why?
Oh, and that assumption that it’s "easy"? Tell that to someone trying to debug Puppeteer's often cryptic error messages. Sure, Puppeteer can be handy, but calling it "easy" is like saying skydiving is "just falling."
I get where you're coming from, but let's put things in perspective. You're right—Puppeteer can feel like overkill if all you need is to scrape some basic HTML. Tools like Cheerio or Axios are indeed more lightweight and can handle simpler tasks without the overhead of a headless browser.
Sure, it's not the go-to for every scraping job, and yes, it has a learning curve. But for cases where you need to interact with a site as a real user would—clicking buttons, waiting for elements to load, bypassing CAPTCHAs, etc.—Puppeteer is invaluable. It’s not the easiest tool for every use case, but in the right hands and for the right job, it’s incredibly powerful.
The fragility you mentioned? That’s true for most scraping tools. Websites change, and scrapers break—whether you’re using Puppeteer, Cheerio, or anything else. It’s the nature of the beast. Debugging can be tricky, but that’s the trade-off for flexibility and power.
So, yeah, it’s not always the simplest option, but dismissing Puppeteer as overkill ignores the complex scenarios where it's not just useful but necessary. It’s about choosing the right tool for the job, and sometimes, you need that chainsaw.
fair play mate
If you need to emulate the browser to get the web page client-side rendered, how to do it without a tool like Puppeteer? I am really curious, because I am looking for alternatives.
To emulate a browser and handle client-side rendering without a tool like Puppeteer, you have a few alternatives depending on the use case. One common method is using headless browsers like Playwright, which is similar to Puppeteer but offers additional features, such as better cross-browser support (Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit).
If you're looking for something lightweight, consider Selenium, though it might not be as fast or efficient for heavy-duty scraping or automation tasks. Another option is Scrapy with a middleware like Splash, which can handle JavaScript-rendered pages, though it's more tailored to web scraping.
If you're working with React or similar front-end frameworks and want to avoid full browser emulation, you can explore static rendering approaches using server-side rendering (SSR) with tools like Next.js or even Prerender.io, which can generate static HTML content from JavaScript apps.
That was great . I want to play with this : )
Go ahead!
Really Very Informative and Helpful....!!!!💯🤞🏻
Glad to hear that!
Nice explanation
Thank you
Where do you host Puppeteer apps? I am used to place all my JS apps to Netlify, but here it doesn't work. I don't fully understand the reason, but it looks like Chromium engine is not available out-of-the-box in their cloud environment.
For hosting Puppeteer apps, Netlify doesn’t support it because Puppeteer needs a full browser environment, which Netlify doesn’t provide. You can try alternatives like Heroku, Vercel (with a custom Node.js API), or AWS Lambda with Chromium layers. These platforms allow Puppeteer to run smoothly in server environments.
that was a great scrapping script! tho i would prefer a python script.
me too! But we can do much more than scraping using puppetter.I just figured this puppetter library and thought of sharing it!