Puppeteer

Overview

Puppeteer is a Node.js library that controls headless Chrome/Chromium. Unlike HTTP-based scrapers (cheerio, axios), Puppeteer renders JavaScript, executes AJAX calls, and interacts with the page like a real user. Use it for scraping SPAs, automating form submissions, generating screenshots/PDFs, and testing web interfaces. This skill covers page navigation, DOM extraction, form filling, network interception, stealth mode, and integration with data processing pipelines.

Instructions

Step 1: Installation

npm install puppeteer           # downloads Chromium (~170MB)
npm install puppeteer-core      # no bundled browser (use system Chrome)

# For stealth (anti-bot bypass)
npm install puppeteer-extra puppeteer-extra-plugin-stealth

Step 2: Basic Page Scraping