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JavaScript Instructions

Interact with the website you want to scrape and get an optimal response.
This parameter only works with render_js=1
Interacting with the website you are scraping is very important, especially if you want to retrieve custom information. WebScrapingAPI 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
action Required
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:
js_instructions='[{"action":"scrollTo","selector":"div.navFooterBackToTop","timeout": 5000, "block": "start"}]'
The js_instructions parameter will accept a URL encoded JSON string that represents an array. This is a mock example that uses multiple actions:
[{"action":"click","selector":"<selector>","timeout":2000, "strict":"false"},{"action":"click","selector":"<selector>","timeout":2000, "strict":"true"},{"action":"click","selector":"<selector>","timeout":2000},{"action":"scrollTo","selector":"<selector>","timeout": 2000, "block": "end"}]
And this is the URL encoded value from the example above:
%5B%7B%22action%22%3A%22click%22%2C%22selector%22%3A%22%3Cselector%3E%22%2C%22timeout%22%3A2000%2C%20%22strict%22%3A%22false%22%7D%2C%7B%22action%22%3A%22click%22%2C%22selector%22%3A%22%3Cselector%3E%22%2C%22timeout%22%3A2000%2C%20%22strict%22%3A%22true%22%7D%2C%7B%22action%22%3A%22click%22%2C%22selector%22%3A%22%3Cselector%3E%22%2C%22timeout%22%3A2000%7D%2C%7B%22action%22%3A%22scrollTo%22%2C%22selector%22%3A%22%3Cselector%3E%22%2C%22timeout%22%3A%202000%2C%20%22block%22%3A%20%22end%22%7D%5D

JavaScript Instructions Integration Examples

get
https://api.webscrapingapi.com/
v1
JavaScript Instructions Passed to Request
The full GET request for the js_instructions should be:
https://api.webscrapingapi.com/v1?api_key=<YOUR_API_KEY>&url=https://webscrapingapi.com&js_instructions=%5B%7B%22action%22%3A%22scrollTo%22%2C%22selector%22%3A%22div.navFooterBackToTop%22%2C%22timeout%22%3A%205000%2C%20%22block%22%3A%20%22start%22%7D%5D%0A
cURL
NodeJS
Python
PHP
Go
Java
.NET
Ruby
curl "https://api.webscrapingapi.com/v1?api_key=<YOUR_API_KEY>&url=https://webscrapingapi.com&render_js=1&js_instructions=%5B%7B%22action%22%3A%22scrollTo%22%2C%22selector%22%3A%22div.navFooterBackToTop%22%2C%22timeout%22%3A%205000%2C%20%22block%22%3A%20%22start%22%7D%5D%0A"
const http = require("https");
const options = {
"method": "GET",
"hostname": "api.webscrapingapi.com",
"port": null,
"path": "/v1?api_key=%7B%7Bapi_key%7D%7D&url=https://webscrapingapi.com&render_js=1&js_instructions=%5B%7B%22action%22%3A%22scrollTo%22%2C%22selector%22%3A%22div.navFooterBackToTop%22%2C%22timeout%22%3A%205000%2C%20%22block%22%3A%20%22start%22%7D%5D%0A",
"headers": {}
};
const req = http.request(options, function (res) {
const chunks = [];
res.on("data", function (chunk) {
chunks.push(chunk);
});
res.on("end", function () {
const body = Buffer.concat(chunks);
console.log(body.toString());
});
});
req.end();
import requests
API_KEY = '<YOUR_API_KEY>'
SCRAPER_URL = 'https://api.webscrapingapi.com/v1'
TARGET_URL = 'https://webscrapingapi.com/'
PARAMS = {
"api_key":API_KEY,
"url": TARGET_URL,
"render_js": 1,
"js_instructions":'[{"action":"scrollTo","selector":"div.navFooterBackToTop","timeout": 5000, "block": "start"}]'
}
response = requests.get(SCRAPER_URL, params=PARAMS)
print(response.text)
<?php
$curl = curl_init();
curl_setopt_array($curl, [
CURLOPT_URL => "https://api.webscrapingapi.com/v1?api_key=%7B%7Bapi_key%7D%7D&url=https://webscrapingapi.com&render_js=1&js_instructions=%5B%7B%22action%22%3A%22scrollTo%22%2C%22selector%22%3A%22div.navFooterBackToTop%22%2C%22timeout%22%3A%205000%2C%20%22block%22%3A%20%22start%22%7D%5D%0A",
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
CURLOPT_ENCODING => "",
CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 10,
CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 30,
CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION => CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1,
CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => "GET",
]);
$response = curl_exec($curl);
$err = curl_error($curl);
curl_close($curl);
if ($err) {
echo "cURL Error #:" . $err;
} else {
echo $response;
}
package main
import (
"fmt"
"net/http"
"io/ioutil"
)
func main() {
url := "https://api.webscrapingapi.com/v1?api_key=%7B%7Bapi_key%7D%7D&url=https://webscrapingapi.com&render_js=1&js_instructions=%5B%7B%22action%22%3A%22scrollTo%22%2C%22selector%22%3A%22div.navFooterBackToTop%22%2C%22timeout%22%3A%205000%2C%20%22block%22%3A%20%22start%22%7D%5D%0A"
req, _ := http.NewRequest("GET", url, nil)
res, _ := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)
defer res.Body.Close()
body, _ := ioutil.ReadAll(res.Body)
fmt.Println(res)
fmt.Println(string(body))
}
HttpResponse<String> response = Unirest.get("https://api.webscrapingapi.com/v1?api_key=%7B%7Bapi_key%7D%7D&url=https://webscrapingapi.com&render_js=1&js_instructions=%5B%7B%22action%22%3A%22scrollTo%22%2C%22selector%22%3A%22div.navFooterBackToTop%22%2C%22timeout%22%3A%205000%2C%20%22block%22%3A%20%22start%22%7D%5D%0A")
.asString();
var client = new RestClient("https://api.webscrapingapi.com/v1?api_key=%7B%7Bapi_key%7D%7D&url=https://webscrapingapi.com&render_js=1&js_instructions=%5B%7B%22action%22%3A%22scrollTo%22%2C%22selector%22%3A%22div.navFooterBackToTop%22%2C%22timeout%22%3A%205000%2C%20%22block%22%3A%20%22start%22%7D%5D%0A");
var request = new RestRequest(Method.GET);
IRestResponse response = client.Execute(request);
require 'uri'
require 'net/http'
require 'openssl'
url = URI("https://api.webscrapingapi.com/v1?api_key=%7B%7Bapi_key%7D%7D&url=https://webscrapingapi.com&render_js=1&js_instructions=%5B%7B%22action%22%3A%22scrollTo%22%2C%22selector%22%3A%22div.navFooterBackToTop%22%2C%22timeout%22%3A%205000%2C%20%22block%22%3A%20%22start%22%7D%5D%0A")
http = Net::HTTP.new(url.host, url.port)
http.use_ssl = true
http.verify_mode = OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_NONE
request = Net::HTTP::Get.new(url)
response = http.request(request)
puts response.read_body
Important! The url & js_instructions parameters have to be encoded. ( i.e. &url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.webscrapingapi.com%2F&js_instructions=%5B%7B%22action%22%3A%22scrollTo%22%2C%22selector%22%3A%22div... )
Response Example
<html>
<head>
<meta name="color-scheme" content="light dark">
</head>
<body>
<pre style="word-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;">{
"args": {
"json": ""
},
"data": "",
"files": {},
"form": {},
"headers": {
"Accept": "text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/avif,image/webp,image/apng,*/*;q=0.8,application/signed-exchange;v=b3;q=0.9",
"Accept-Encoding": "gzip, deflate, br",
"Accept-Language": "en-US,en;q=0.9",
"Host": "httpbin.org",
"Sec-Ch-Ua": "\"Google Chrome\";v=\"105\", \" Not;A Brand\";v=\"99\", \"Chromium\";v=\"105\"",
"Sec-Ch-Ua-Mobile": "?0",
"Sec-Ch-Ua-Platform": "\"macOS\"",
"Sec-Fetch-Dest": "document",
"Sec-Fetch-Mode": "navigate",
"Sec-Fetch-Site": "none",
"Sec-Fetch-User": "?1",
"Upgrade-Insecure-Requests": "1",
"User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_14_6) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/105.0.0.0 Safari/537.36",
"X-Amzn-Trace-Id": "Root=1-632aed04-47d111760275920f3389aaed"
},
"json": null,
"method": "GET",
"origin": "46.226.151.166",
"url": "https://httpbin.org/anything?json"
}
</pre>
</body>
</html>ht