scraping-javascript-rendered-webpage

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.

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.