Puppeteer First Touch

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What is Puppeteer

Puppeteer is a Node library which provides a high-level API to control headless Chrome or Chromium over the DevTools Protocol. It can also be configured to use full (non-headless) Chrome or Chromium.

Well, according to the Puppeteer office Github documentation, It is a library, it provides API services, and it controls Chrome. It’s maintained by Chrome DevTools team, only supported in Node v7.6 or greater version, and only works with Chrome or Chromium.

Manipulates Chrome like a puppeteer with your code.

Requirements / Environment

  1. Node >= v7.6, Puppeteer requires async/await

  2. Need latest chrome driver, it will be automatically downloaded when you install puppeteer from npm

    npm install puppeteer --save

Quick Try Out

Puppeteer provides a playground for a quick try out.

Taking a snapshot for my favirate clothing website:

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const puppeteer = require('puppeteer');
(async () => {
  const browser = await puppeteer.launch();   // creating a browser instance
  const page = await browser.newPage();       // Use browser to create a new page obj
  await page.click('a > img[alt=Rb6bjbbjkyi]');  // using selector to click a img with specific item number
  await page.goto('http://www.supremenewyork.com/shop/new');  // take page obj to your link
  await page.screenshot({path: 'supreme.png'}); // take a screenshot and save to path
  await browser.close();  // don't forget to close your browser
})();

Thoughts

The whole working process just like using a regular browser, open a web browser, enter a link, and go to the page, take a screenshot of the page, then close browser. Very easy to understand and use.

Base on the documentation, most of developers are using puppeteer as a testing tools for their projects, also it can be used to automating and scraping the website, you know, writing a robot to auto copping limited clothes or sneakers…🔥