What techniques can I use to scrape real-time web chats or comment sections?

[Headley Corrie]

Puppeteer and Playwright can simulate scrolling or clicking on “load more” buttons to capture all messages in longer comment threads.

[Herakles Urias]

I save timestamps for each chat message, which helps organize the data chronologically and maintain the original conversation flow.

[Claudius Rebeka]

Monitoring XHR requests while interacting with the chat often reveals direct API calls that can be scraped more efficiently.

[Eugenija Heliodoros]

I set up scripts to refresh periodically, capturing new messages only, which minimizes load and keeps the data current.

[Desirae Marama]

Storing chat data in a NoSQL database like MongoDB is efficient, as it allows for flexible storage of real-time, unstructured data.

[Abram Ebbe]

Filtering chat content by keywords as I scrape helps reduce storage demands, especially in high-traffic chat applications.

[Renske Martina]

Using Selenium, I automate screenshots for record-keeping if text extraction isn’t feasible due to complex rendering.