{"id":6099,"date":"2023-10-18T14:47:43","date_gmt":"2023-10-18T14:47:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/royadata.io\/blog\/?p=6099"},"modified":"2023-10-18T14:47:43","modified_gmt":"2023-10-18T14:47:43","slug":"web-scraping-javascript-tutorials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/royadata.io\/blog\/web-scraping-javascript-tutorials\/","title":{"rendered":"How to scrape HTML from a website Using Javascript?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Do you plan to scrape websites using JavaScript? With the help of the Node.js platform and its associated libraries, you can use JavaScript to develop web scrapers that can scrape data from any website you like.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"web\n<\/picture>\n

We are in an era where businesses depend largely on data, and the Internet is a huge source of data with textual data being the most important. Social and business researchers are interested in collecting data<\/a> from websites that have data of interest to them.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, most websites do not make it easy for data scientists to collect the required data. For this reason, researchers have to use automated means to collect these data on their own. This automated means of collecting publicly accessible data on web pages using web scrapers<\/a> is known as web scraping.<\/p>\n

Read more, What is Web Scraping and Is it Legal?<\/a><\/p>\n

Web scrapers can be developed using any programming language that is Turing complete. Java, PHP, Python, JavaScript, C\/C++, and C#, among others, have been used for writing web scrapers. Being that as it may, some languages are much more popular than others as far as developing web scrapers are concerned.<\/p>\n

JavaScript is not a popular choice. In recent times, its popularity as a language for developing web scrapers is on the rise \u2013 thanks to the availability of web scraping libraries. In this article, I will be showing you how to develop web scrapers using JavaScript.<\/p>\n\n

<\/span>Node.js \u2013 The Game Changer<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

JavaScript was originally developed for frontend web development to add interactivity and responsiveness to web pages. Outside of a browser, JavaScript cannot run. For this reason, you cannot use it for backend development as you can use the likes of Python<\/a>, Java, and C++.\u00a0 This then means that you will need to be proficient in two languages to be able to do both frontend and backend development. However, Developers thought that JavaScript is a complete programming language and, as such, shouldn\u2019t be confined to only the browser environment.<\/p>\n

\"Nodejs\"\n<\/picture>\n

This led Ryan Dahl to develop Node.js. Node.js is a JavaScript runtime environment built on Chrome\u2019s V8 JavaScript Engine. With Node.js, you can write codes and get them to run on PCs and servers, just like PHP, Java, and Python.<\/p>\n

This now made many developers take JavaScript as a complete language to be taken seriously \u2013 and many libraries and frameworks were developed for it to make programming backend using JavaScript easily. With Node.js, you can now use one language to write codes for both frontend and backend.<\/p>\n

As a JavaScript developer, you can develop a complete web scraper using JavaScript, and you will use Node.js to run it. I will show you how to code a web scraper using JavaScript and some Node.js libraries.<\/p>\n\n

<\/span>Installations and Setup<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

\"Node.js\n<\/picture>\n

Unlike the JavaScript runtime that comes installed in every modern browser, you will need to install Node.js for you to use it for your development. You can install Node.js from the Node.js official website<\/a> \u2013 file size is less than 20MB for Windows users. After installing Node.js, you can enter the below code in your command line to see if it has been installed successfully.<\/p>\n

Node<\/strong><\/pre>\n
if no error message is returned, then Node has been installed successfully. You can also confirm by looking out for the Node.js application in your list of installed programs. After installation, the next step is to install the necessary libraries\/modules for web scraping.<\/p>\n
For this tutorial, I will advise you to create a new folder in your desktop and name it web scraping. Then launch Command Prompt (MS-DOS\/ command line) and navigate to the folder using the command below.<\/p>\n
cd desktop\/web scraper<\/strong><\/pre>\n
Now, let start installing the Node.js packages for web scraper \u2013 don\u2019t close Command Prompt yet.<\/p>\n