How to Parse Web Pages with JQuery
Parsing data is an important part of web scraping. It occurs after the raw data is available to you and allows a developer to gather specific information from that raw data that would otherwise be nearly impossible to pull out.
There are various strategies for doing this, but for this tutorial, we will focus specifically on jQuery JSON parse methods. With this parsing functionality, you can work with JSON, also known as JavaScript Object Notation data.
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For many reasons, jQuery is the ideal library for crawling web pages, as well as web scraping goals and tasks. You can use it for both client-side and server-side scraping tasks.
With jQuery’s JSON parsing functionality comes the ability for developers to navigate and extract data more efficiently. Learn more about what it means to use jQuery JSON parse strategies and how to do so.
jQuery Parse JSON Object

Before going further, it helps to have a bit of information about what all of these tools are. We have created a variety of tools to help you with this process over time. However, let’s break down some of the details.
- JQuery: You may already know that jQuery is a lightweight JavaScript library. That means it is much easier to use than what you would use if you were applying JavaScript to your project. It is small and fast but still feature-filled, which is why it is so commonly used for tasks that need to be done quickly and efficiently.
- JSON: JavaScript Object Notation, or JSON, is a lightweight data-interchange format. It is often used to transmit data between the server and the client. It is often used as a subset of the JavaScript syntax. It is easily readable by people (and the machines you are using). For that reason, it is often a component of web scraping.
You can use JSON to parse jQuery. Note that JSON is a common format for exchanging data between a server and a web application. Now that you have some details, let’s break down how jQuery parse works with these tools.
How to Convert JSON Parse jQuery

With the jQuery application, you have a variety of tools to help with a range of projects. jQuery, for example, offers the $.parseJSON() method to convert a JSON-formatted string into a JavaScript object. To do this, it will take a well-formed JSON string as input and then return it with the corresponding JavaScript object. In some situations, the script may not be valid in JSON. In those situations, the process will create an error message.
This method is beneficial in a range of ways, but it’s especially useful when dealing with responses from an API or a server. It ensures the data is in a usable format, which is often a concern.
With this method, the jQuery parse string that contains JSON data will be used as the input. It will then return the corresponding JavaScript object or array. This method is heavily used, though it is less common today. That is because modern JavaScript offers an alternative option in the JSON.parse() method. If you are using JavaScript ES5 or later, then this more modern method is considered the standard solution. It is often thought of as the preferred method for parsing data in JSON.
Notably, jQuery’s $.parseJSON() is now considered deprecated. It is still worth exploring them as jQuery’s JSON parsing capabilities simplify the process of working with data. It can be beneficial, specifically in older projects or in situations where backward compatibility is a necessary factor to consider.
Web Scraping with jQuery: jQuery Parse Solutions

It is possible to use jQuery to crawl web pages for web scraping. Learning to use jQuery for web scraping on the client side is a good starting point. Remember that client-side web scraping involves fetching and then processing the web content that comes from a web browser. This method allows for the extraction of JavaScript code from within the browser enabling both the access and manipulation of the DOM. The jQuery library can be used to do this.
If you are planning to engage in client-side web scraping, you can do so by using a public API or, if you prefer, by parsing the HTML content of the page. It is not common for websites to offer a publicly available API, which is why it is necessary to download HTML documents and then extract data from them using the parsing process.
If we go back to the process of web scraping, you will first need to fetch the HTML content from the target website – that is where the content is sitting right now. You then need to use the placeholder “example.com” for this project. To move forward, you will use the get() method in jQuery, which will perform an HTTP GET request. It then provides the server’s response through a callback function. Take a look at what the data looks like:
$.get("https://example.com/", function(html) { console.log(html); });
Using that as a starting point, you can then add in some HTML code and add a reference to the jQuery library. To do this, you will need to use the < script> tag. Here is what it might look like:
!DOCTYPE html> < html lang="en"> < head> < meta charset="UTF-8" /> < meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" /> < title>Web Scraping with jQuery< /title> < script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.6.0.min.js">< /script> < /head > < body > JavaScript code < /body > < /html >
Now, you will need to implement the JavaScript code. This code will fetch and log the HTML content. This is done from the URL and using jQuery to do so. You will then need to add the following into the<body> tag of your HTML document:
< script > $(document).ready(function() { $.get("https://example.com function(html) { console.log(html); }); }); < /script>
If you have done all of these steps properly, you should have HTML code that looks like the following:
< !DOCTYPE html> < html lang="en"> < head> < meta charset="UTF-8" /> < meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" /> < title>Web Scraping with jQuery < script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.6.0.min.js"> < /head> < body> < script> $(document).ready(function () { $.get("https://example.com/", function (html) { console.log(html); }); }); < /script> < /body> < /html>
Go ahead and input that into your system and see what happens.
Scraping with jQuery on the Server Side: jQuery JSON Decode

Remember that you can also use jQuery parse methods for the server side of the process. If you are scraping with jQuery on the server side, often in a Node.js environment, you can then use the jsdom NPM package to help you with the process. When you do that – link jQuery with jsdom, you will query and manipulate the DOM on the server side highly effectively. It is done in the same way that would be done in a browser.
Before you can go through this process of jQuery JSON parse on the server side, you will need to install Node.js on your system. Once that is complete, you will then need to set up the project in the Node.js environment. To do so, initialize a new Node.js Project Open terminal. Then, you will need to create the directory for the project and get to that directory. Ultimately, you will need to run the npm init -y command to set up the Node.js project.
Here is the code you can input to do this right now with ease:
mkdir jquery-scraper cd jquery-scraper npm init -y
Now, for our project, this will create a package.json file. Try it out to see if you have the details in place.
The next step is to then install both jQuery and jsdom using the proper packages. To that within your environment with:
npm install jsdom jquery
You can now get started with the scraping process. Find a page you want to scrape now. It should be a rather straightforward news page, for example, to get you started. Then, follow these steps to fetch HTML with jQuery get(). Get the HTML of the target web page, using the jQuery get() method. This will load the data from the server and use the HTTP GET request. Once you do that, you can then write the Node.js script using the jsdom library we mentioned earlier. This will handle the HTTP GET request to obtain the HTML content from the website page you are trying to access. Here is what that code would look like (fill in the blanks, of course, with the site you plan to use).
const { JSDOM } = require("jsdom"); // Initialize JSDOM on the "example.com/" page to avoid CORS problems const { window } = new JSDOM("", { url: "https://example.com/", }); const $ = require("jquery")(window); $.get("example.com/", function (html) { console.log(html); });
To break that down a bit, we imported the JSDOM class from the JSDOM library to allow the creation of a simulated browser environment within Node.js. From there, we added a JSDOM instance by providing the URLs to simulate for the project. This created a new variable called WINDOW.
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The WINDOW object represents the simulated browser window that would be just like what you would find in a traditional browser if you opened it. Then, we brought in the jQuery library and passed the WINDOW object. In doing so, it integrates jQuery into the simulated environment. Now that all of that work is done, it is possible to use its functionalities for various needs.
To do what we came to do, we use jQuery’s get() method, which fetches the HTML content from the URL.
How to Use jQuery Parse JSON

Let’s talk about extracting that data now using jQuery find(). The jQuery parse JSON object considers several factors. First, a jQuery object represents a set of DOM elements. As a result, the .find() method lets you search for the descendant elements within the DOM tree. You can then create a new jQuery object that contains the elements you are looking for.
When we use this method, it returns a set of DOM elements that match the CSS selector, the jQuery object, or, in some cases, the HTML element that was passed as the parameter. Let’s say we want to pull news information from our website example. We use jQuery to find all elements with the tr.athing class in the HTML content we retrieved. These are each the news items on the site.
$.get("https://news.example.com/", function(html) { const newsItemElements = $(html).find("tr.athing"); }); To iterate over each news item element to extract the details we want – in this case the rank, title, and the URL, we need to use the jQuery .search() method. It looks like this: $.get("https://news.example.com/", function(html) { const newsHTMLElements = $(html).find("tr.athing"); newsHTMLElements.each((i, newsItemElement) => { // Code to extract data from each news item will go here }); });
Now, to find each news item, we locate the element that contains just the rank. The .find() method allows us to extract that, and the .text() method will extract the content from it.
$.get("https://news.example", function(html) { const newsHTMLElements = $(html).find("tr.athing"); newsHTMLElements.each((i, newsItemElement) => { const rank = $(newsItemElement).find("span.rank").text().replace('.', ''); }); });
Why Parse JSON with jQuery

There are a variety of benefits to using this method for jQuery JSON parse methods. As you capture data from the web to use for any project you have in mind, you need the right tools to help you. The jQuery parseJSON strategy we discussed here is one of the options available to you. At Rayobyte, we offer the tools you need to master a variety of projects from jQuery string to JSON and much more. Take a closer look at how we can help you. Explore our web scraping API to help you get the process started, and you will be able to use our proxy service to protect yourself during this process. Contact us to learn more.
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