How do you scrape AJAX pages?

Overview:

All screen scraping first requires manual review of the page you want to extract resources from. When dealing with AJAX you usually just need to analyze a bit more than just simply the HTML.

When dealing with AJAX this just means that the value you want is not in the initial HTML document that you requested, but that javascript will be exectued which asks the server for the extra information you want.

You can therefore usually simply analyze the javascript and see which request the javascript makes and just call this URL instead from the start.

Example:

Take this as an example, assume the page you want to scrape from has the following script:

<script type="text/javascript">
function ajaxFunction()
{
var xmlHttp;
try
  {
  // Firefox, Opera 8.0+, Safari
  xmlHttp=new XMLHttpRequest();
  }
catch (e)
  {
  // Internet Explorer
  try
    {
    xmlHttp=new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP");
    }
  catch (e)
    {
    try
      {
      xmlHttp=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
      }
    catch (e)
      {
      alert("Your browser does not support AJAX!");
      return false;
      }
    }
  }
  xmlHttp.onreadystatechange=function()
    {
    if(xmlHttp.readyState==4)
      {
      document.myForm.time.value=xmlHttp.responseText;
      }
    }
  xmlHttp.open("GET","time.asp",true);
  xmlHttp.send(null);
  }
</script>

Then all you need to do is instead do an HTTP request to time.asp of the same server instead. Example from w3schools.

Advanced scraping with C++:

For complex usage, and if you're using C++ you could also consider using the firefox javascript engine SpiderMonkey to execute the javascript on a page.

Advanced scraping with Java:

For complex usage, and if you're using Java you could also consider using the firefox javascript engine for Java Rhino

Advanced scraping with .NET:

For complex usage, and if you're using .Net you could also consider using the Microsoft.vsa assembly. Recently replaced with ICodeCompiler/CodeDOM.

In my opinion the simpliest solution is to use Casperjs, a framework based on the WebKit headless browser phantomjs.

The whole page is loaded, and it's very easy to scrape any ajax-related data. You can check this basic tutorial to learn Automating & Scraping with PhantomJS and CasperJS

You can also give a look at this example code, on how to scrape google suggests keywords :

/*global casper:true*/
var casper = require('casper').create();
var suggestions = [];
var word = casper.cli.get(0);

if (!word) {
    casper.echo('please provide a word').exit(1);
}

casper.start('http://www.google.com/', function() {
    this.sendKeys('input[name=q]', word);
});

casper.waitFor(function() {
  return this.fetchText('.gsq_a table span').indexOf(word) === 0
}, function() {
  suggestions = this.evaluate(function() {
      var nodes = document.querySelectorAll('.gsq_a table span');
      return [].map.call(nodes, function(node){
          return node.textContent;
      });
  });
});

casper.run(function() {
  this.echo(suggestions.join('\n')).exit();
});

If you can get at it, try examining the DOM tree. Selenium does this as a part of testing a page. It also has functions to click buttons and follow links, which may be useful.

How do you scrape AJAX pages?

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