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Compare Python and Node.js to scrape product reviews from Momo Taiwan
What are the differences between using Python and Node.js to scrape product reviews from Momo Taiwan, a leading e-commerce platform? Does one programming language provide advantages over the other in handling dynamic content? Would Python’s BeautifulSoup and requests libraries be more efficient for parsing static HTML, while Node.js with Puppeteer excels at rendering JavaScript-heavy pages? Which would be easier to use when dealing with multi-threading or concurrency for large-scale scraping tasks?
Here are two potential implementations—one in Python and one in Node.js—to scrape product reviews from a Momo Taiwan product page. Which approach handles the site’s dynamic nature better, and which is easier to maintain and scale?Python Implementation:import requests from bs4 import BeautifulSoup # URL of the Momo product page url = "https://www.momoshop.com.tw/product-page" # Headers to mimic a browser request headers = { "User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/91.0.4472.124 Safari/537.36" } # Fetch the page content response = requests.get(url, headers=headers) if response.status_code == 200: soup = BeautifulSoup(response.content, "html.parser") # Extract reviews reviews = soup.find_all("div", class_="review") for idx, review in enumerate(reviews, 1): reviewer = review.find("span", class_="reviewer-name").text.strip() if review.find("span", class_="reviewer-name") else "Anonymous" comment = review.find("p", class_="review-text").text.strip() if review.find("p", class_="review-text") else "No comment" print(f"Review {idx}: {reviewer} - {comment}") else: print(f"Failed to fetch the page. Status code: {response.status_code}")Node.js Implementation:
const puppeteer = require('puppeteer'); (async () => { const browser = await puppeteer.launch({ headless: true }); const page = await browser.newPage(); // Navigate to the Momo product page await page.goto('https://www.momoshop.com.tw/product-page', { waitUntil: 'networkidle2' }); // Wait for the reviews section to load await page.waitForSelector('.review-section'); // Extract reviews const reviews = await page.evaluate(() => { return Array.from(document.querySelectorAll('.review')).map(review => { const reviewer = review.querySelector('.reviewer-name')?.innerText.trim() || 'Anonymous'; const comment = review.querySelector('.review-text')?.innerText.trim() || 'No comment'; return { reviewer, comment }; }); }); console.log('Reviews:', reviews); await browser.close(); })(); -
4 Replies
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Python’s BeautifulSoup is lightweight and excels at parsing static HTML, making it a good choice for simpler pages. However, it may struggle with dynamically loaded content unless combined with a tool like Selenium.
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Node.js with Puppeteer is better suited for handling dynamic content since it can render JavaScript-heavy pages. It also allows for easier interaction with elements such as pop-ups or expandable sections, which are common on e-commerce sites like Momo.
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Concurrency is simpler to handle in Node.js due to its non-blocking I/O model. This makes it more efficient for scraping multiple pages simultaneously, compared to Python’s threading or multiprocessing libraries.
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Python has a simpler learning curve and a vast ecosystem of scraping libraries, making it an excellent choice for beginners. Node.js, while slightly more complex for scraping, is ideal for developers already familiar with JavaScript.
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