Have you ever lost your head trying to keep web scraping success rates high?
We know what that feels like.
However, sometimes going headless is actually a good idea, as long as it's the head of your
browser that's removed.
That's right, headless browsers are a thing.
If you want to know what they are and how they can help in web scraping, stay tuned
'till the end of this video.
So, what is a headless browser?
The answer is a lot less grim than it may sound.
It's just a regular web browser without a user interface.
Just imagine Chrome, Firefox, or any other browser with no input fields, buttons, bookmarks,
or tabs.
Interacting with a headless browser is no mystery.
You do it by writing scripts that detail the tasks it needs to perform.
This way, you can imitate scrolling, downloading and uploading data, creating tabs, entering
URLs, and much more.
However, a headless browser is not something you'd use to watch cute cat videos.
Well, unless you want to play hundreds of them at the same time.
In that case, go ahead!
So what is a headless browser good for?
It’s most commonly used for two things: web testing and web scraping.
In web testing, developers use headless browsers to find bugs in their apps and websites.
They do it by configuring the browser to click on links and various elements, type data into
fields, fill in forms, simulate loads, and even go through complete workflows.
When it comes to web scraping, we know that HTML extraction tools don't always do the
trick.
If you encounter such Javascript magic as asynchronous loading, endless scrolling, and
browser fingerprinting, you might want to use a headless browser.
It will fully render the website and emulate a real browser to get that precious data off
the most challenging targets.
Do you always need to use a headless browser when web scraping?
When you’re scraping, you either don't need a headless browser, or you can't do anything
without it.
There's rarely anything in-between.
Let's say the website you're trying to access prefers to have nothing to do with Javascript.
Then it's good news for you!
Regular web scraping apps or libraries like Requests and Beautiful Soup will do the job
faster and with less complexity.
However, if you're dealing with dynamic AJAX pages or data nested in JavaScript elements,
a headless browser is your best bet for success.
That's because you'll need to render the entire page like a real user.
So, let me guess, some of you have already tried web scraping, or maybe even used the
headless browser?
Let us know how it went in the comments section!
The best headless browser libraries Now, let's talk about what are your headless
browser options.
Spoiler alert: there are several good choices out there.
Here are some of the main ones: Selenium, Playwright, Puppeteer, and Splash.
Selenium is an open-source automation tool that allows writing scripts for all of the
main web browsers – Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Edge, and Safari.
While it's mainly used to perform automated tests, it works well for web scraping, too.
Relatively new to the market, Playwright is a node.js library for controlling headless
browsers.
It can emulate all three major browser groups: Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit.
Playwright supports page navigation, input events, downloading and uploading data, emulating
mobile devices, and more.
A work of Chrome developers, Puppeteer is a node.js library created to control its 'puppet'
Chrome.
But it works well with Firefox, too.
Puppeteer allows crawling pages, clicking on elements, downloading data, using proxies,
and so on.
Finally, Splash is a lightweight headless web browser maintained by ScrapingHub.
It uses WebKit for rendering JavaScript and can be extended with scripts written in Lua.
Splash has commands to emulate complex human-like interactions, along with the ability to block
ads and turn off images for less resource use.
We hope that this video answers the questions you have about headless browsers.
If not, don't hesitate to ask them in the comment section below.
Hey, wait!
Before you go, check out this list of the best proxies.
You may find a perfect proxy provider for your web scraping tasks!