Interact with the website you want to scrape and get an optimal response.
Interacting with the website you are scraping is very important, especially if you want to retrieve custom information. BrowserAPI allows you to do so, by simply adding the js_instructions parameter to your request.
This parameter's value is a stringified object, which accepts the following options:
Parameter
Type
Description
actionRequired
string
The action that you want to perform. Accepted values are:
-click - click on an element specified by the selector option
-click_and_navigate - same as click, except it also handles the page navigation that is triggered by the click
-scrollTo - scroll to an element specified by the selector option
-scrollPx - scroll a specified distance in pixels specified by the pixels option
-scrollInf - scroll a specified number of times specified by the count option
-delete_element - delete the first element found for a given selector. If the multiple property on the instuction is true, it will delete all the elements.
-focus - sets the focus on a HTML element
-value - sets the value of a HTML input
-typed_value - same as value, but the value is typed like a user would
-submit - works only on FORM elements
-submit_and_navigate - same as submit, except it also handles the page navigation that is triggered by the submit
-solve_captcha - solve any reCaptcha or hCaptcha challenge.
- wait_for_css - wait for a CSS selector to exist in the page.
selector
string
The CSS selector on which you want to perform your action.
block
string
The area of the HTML element identified by the specified CSS selector. Used with the scrollTo action. Accepted values are start, center and end. The default value is start.
value
string
The value of a HTML input identified by the specified CSS selector. Used with the value action.
pixels
string
The distance for vertically scrolling. Used with the scrollPx action.
count
int
The number of times to perform a vertically scroll. Used with the scrollInf action. The scrolling distance is calculated by the window height. Useful for lazy-loaded lists.
timeout
int
Perform a delay after each JavaScript instruction. For the scrollInf action, the delay is performed after each individual scroll. For the wait_for_css action, it represents to time to wait for the CSS selector to appear and it defaults to 5 seconds. Measured in ms.
strict
string
By default, the JavaScript instructions are executed in "strict mode", which means that if an error occurs during the execution of one instruction, the request will be aborted and an error will be returned.
You have the option to deactivate this behaviour by assigning the strict key the value "false" within your instruction.
A full example of how this parameter would look like in production is: