Crawls websites with the headless Chrome and Puppeteer library using a provided server-side Node.js code. This crawler is an alternative to apify/web-scraper that gives you finer control over the process. Supports both recursive crawling and list of URLs. Supports login to website.

Use the following form to configure Puppeteer Scraper. The Start URLs and Page function are required and all other fields are optional. To learn more about the different options, click on their title or on the nearby question marks. For details about the Page function visit the actor's README in the ACTOR INFO tab.

Console messages from the Browser will be included in the log. This may result in the log being flooded by error messages, warnings and other messages of little value, especially with high concurrency.

Browser log

For pages where simple 'href' links are not available, this attribute allows you to specify a CSS selector matching elements that the scraper will mouse click after the page function finishes. Any triggered requests, navigations or open tabs will be intercepted and the target URLs will be filtered using Pseudo URLs and/or Glob patterns and subsequently added to the request queue. Leave empty to prevent the scraper from clicking in the page. Using this setting will have a performance impact.

Clickable elements selector

This object will be available on pageFunction's context as customData.

Custom data

Name or ID of the dataset that will be used for storing results. If left empty, the default dataset of the run will be used.

Dataset name

Debug messages will be included in the log. Use <code>context.log.debug('message')</code> to log your own debug messages.

Debug log

Scraper will download CSS stylesheets. Disabling this may speed up the scrape, but certain websites could stop working correctly.

Download CSS

Scraper will download media such as images, fonts, videos and sounds. Disabling this may speed up the scrape, but certain websites could stop working correctly.

Settings that help to disable downloading web page resources.

Download media

Glob patterns to match links in the page that you want to enqueue. Combine with Link selector to tell the scraper where to find links. Omitting the Glob patterns will cause the scraper to enqueue all links matched by the Link selector.

Glob Patterns

By default, browsers run in headless mode. You can toggle this off to run them in headful mode, which can help with certain rare anti-scraping protections but is slower and more costly.

Run browsers in headless mode

Scraper will ignore CSP (content security policy) and CORS (cross origin resource sharing) settings of visited pages and requested domains. This enables you to freely use XHR/Fetch to make HTTP requests from the scraper.

Ignore CORS and CSP

Scraper will ignore SSL certificate errors.

Various options that help you disable browser security features such as HTTPS certificates and CORS.

Ignore SSL errors

The provided cookies will be pre-set to all pages the scraper opens.

Initial cookies

URL fragments (the parts of URL after a <code>#</code>) are not considered when the scraper determines whether a URL has already been visited. This means that when adding URLs such as <code>https://example.com/#foo</code> and <code>https://example.com/#bar</code>, only the first will be visited. Turn this option on to tell the scraper to visit both.

Keep URL fragments

Name or ID of the key-value store that will be used for storing records. If left empty, the default key-value store of the run will be used.

Key-value store name

CSS selector matching elements with 'href' attributes that should be enqueued. To enqueue urls from <code><div class="my-class" href=...></code> tags, you would enter div.my-class. Leave empty to ignore all links.

Link selector

Defines how many pages can be processed by the scraper in parallel. The scraper automatically increases and decreases concurrency based on available system resources. Use this option to set a hard limit.

Max concurrency

Defines how many links away from the StartURLs will the scraper descend. 0 means unlimited.

Max crawling depth

Maximum number of pages that the scraper will open. 0 means unlimited.

Max pages per run

Maximum number of times the request for the page will be retried in case of an error. Setting it to 0 means that the request will be attempted once and will not be retried if it fails.

Max request retries

Maximum number of results that will be saved to dataset. The scraper will terminate afterwards. 0 means unlimited.

Max result records

Page function

Maximum time the scraper will wait for the page function to execute in seconds.

Page function timeout

Maximum time the scraper will allow a web page to load in seconds.

Page load timeout

Async functions that are sequentially evaluated after the navigation. Good for checking if the navigation was successful. The function accepts `crawlingContext` as the only parameter.

Post-navigation hooks

Async functions that are sequentially evaluated before the navigation. Good for setting additional cookies or browser properties before navigation. The function accepts two parameters, `crawlingContext` and `gotoOptions`, which are passed to the `page.goto()` function the crawler calls to navigate.

Pre-navigation hooks

Specifies proxy servers that will be used by the scraper in order to hide its origin. For details, see <a href='https://apify.com/apify/puppeteer-scraper#proxy-configuration' target='_blank' rel='noopener'>Proxy configuration</a> in README.

Proxy configuration

This property indicates the strategy of proxy rotation and can only be used in conjunction with Apify Proxy. The recommended setting automatically picks the best proxies from your available pool and rotates them evenly, discarding proxies that become blocked or unresponsive. If this strategy does not work for you for any reason, you may configure the scraper to either use a new proxy for each request, or to use one proxy as long as possible, until the proxy fails. IMPORTANT: This setting will only use your available Apify Proxy pool, so if you don't have enough proxies for a given task, no rotation setting will produce satisfactory results.

Proxy rotation

Pseudo-URLs to match links in the page that you want to enqueue. Combine with Link selector to tell the scraper where to find links. Omitting the Pseudo-URLs will cause the scraper to enqueue all links matched by the Link selector.

Pseudo-URLs

Name of the request queue that will be used for storing requests. If left empty, the default request queue of the run will be used.

Request queue name

Use only english alphanumeric characters dashes and underscores. A session is a representation of a user. It has it's own IP and cookies which are then used together to emulate a real user. Usage of the sessions is controlled by the Proxy rotation option. By providing a session pool name, you enable sharing of those sessions across multiple actor runs. This is very useful when you need specific cookies for accessing the websites or when a lot of your proxies are already blocked. Instead of trying randomly, a list of working sessions will be saved and a new actor run can reuse those sessions. Note that the IP lock on sessions expires after 24 hours, unless the session is used again in that window.

Session pool name

Start URLs

The scraper will use a real Chrome browser instead of a Chromium masking as Chrome. Using this option may help with bypassing certain anti-scraping protections, but risks that the scraper will be unstable or not work at all.

Settings that help mask as a real user and prevent scraper detection.

Use Chrome

The scraper will wait until the selected events are triggered in the page before executing the page function. Available events are <code>domcontentloaded</code>, <code>load</code>, <code>networkidle2</code> and <code>networkidle0</code>. <a href="https://pptr.dev/#?product=Puppeteer&show=api-pagegotourl-options" target="_blank">See Puppeteer docs</a>.

Navigation wait until

Puppeteer Scraper Input

puppeteer-scraper

Crawls websites with headless Chrome and Puppeteer using server-side Node.js code. Supports recursive crawling and URL list. Supports login to website.

Puppeteer Scraper for headless Chrome

Puppeteer Scraper

Puppeteer Scraper for headless Chrome · Apify

API · Puppeteer Scraper for headless Chrome · Apify

Input · Puppeteer Scraper for headless Chrome · Apify

Source code · Puppeteer Scraper for headless Chrome · Apify

Related actors · Puppeteer Scraper for headless Chrome · Apify

Crawls websites with the headless Chrome and Puppeteer library using a provided server-side Node.js code. This crawler is an alternative to apify/web-scraper that gives you finer control over the p...

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