#Build a webscraper node install#

It actually gives you a much simpler API to work with web pages. You can think of CasperJS as a companion to PhantomJS.

#Build a webscraper node install#

Once that is downloaded, you'll need to install CasperJSВ in a similar fashion. If you're using a Mac with homebrew, you can install PhantomJS using brew install phantomjs Version 2.0.1 is available now - you can either download it from the website, or use homebrew or an equivalent package manager. Even though we're not using PhantomJS directly, you'll still need to install that. I'll assume you already have Node.js installed (I mean, who doesn't!). There's a little bit of installation that you're going to need to do first. More about that later Setting Up Your Machine Note: I would have used DZone here, but I was having issues capturing the page. Let's start with a simple challenge - a web scraper to go to Techmeme and get a list of the top stories of the day! Or maybe, like me, you're just curious and want to see how easy it really is. There are lots of tools out there to help you with scraping content, such as Import.ioВ but there are times that these utilities just don't get you all the way there. Needless to say, this can be a legal minefield, so you should make sure to stay within the bounds of copyright law. Sometimes, and only sometimes, you need to resort to web scraping. A much needed API might be missing, or there just might be too much data to cope with. Sometimes it can be difficult and laborious to collect data for your applications.