-
Compare using PHP and Node.js to scrape product ratings from ETMall Taiwan
How does scraping product ratings from ETMall Taiwan differ when using PHP versus Node.js? Is PHP’s DOMDocument better suited for parsing static HTML, or does Node.js with Puppeteer handle dynamic JavaScript-rendered content more effectively? Would either language provide a significant advantage when handling large-scale scraping across multiple product pages?
Below are two potential implementations—one in PHP and one in Node.js—to scrape product ratings from an ETMall Taiwan product page. Which approach is more efficient and easier to scale for dynamic content?PHP Implementation:<?php require 'vendor/autoload.php'; use GuzzleHttp\Client; // Initialize Guzzle client $client = new Client(); $response = $client->get('https://www.etmall.com.tw/Product-Page'); $html = $response->getBody()->getContents(); // Load HTML into DOMDocument $dom = new DOMDocument; libxml_use_internal_errors(true); $dom->loadHTML($html); libxml_clear_errors(); // Scrape product ratings $xpath = new DOMXPath($dom); $rating = $xpath->query('//div[contains(@class, "product-rating")]'); if ($rating->length > 0) { echo "Product Rating: " . trim($rating->item(0)->nodeValue) . "\n"; } else { echo "No rating information found.\n"; } ?>Node.js Implementation:
const puppeteer = require('puppeteer'); (async () => { const browser = await puppeteer.launch({ headless: true }); const page = await browser.newPage(); // Navigate to the ETMall product page await page.goto('https://www.etmall.com.tw/Product-Page', { waitUntil: 'networkidle2' }); // Wait for the rating section to load await page.waitForSelector('.product-rating'); // Extract product rating const rating = await page.evaluate(() => { const element = document.querySelector('.product-rating'); return element ? element.innerText.trim() : 'No rating information found'; }); console.log('Product Rating:', rating); await browser.close(); })(); -
4 Replies
-
PHP’s DOMDocument is lightweight and effective for parsing static HTML content. However, it might struggle with dynamic elements, which require additional tools or workarounds, like fetching API data directly.
-
Node.js with Puppeteer is ideal for handling JavaScript-rendered content, as it can fully render the page and extract ratings even if they are dynamically loaded. This makes it more reliable for modern web scraping tasks.
-
PHP’s simplicity and wide adoption make it a good choice for small-scale tasks, but it lacks native concurrency support, which can limit its scalability when scraping multiple pages simultaneously.
-
Node.js excels in handling concurrent requests and is better suited for large-scale scraping projects. Its ecosystem also includes libraries for rotating proxies and managing user agents, making it more robust for scraping tasks.
Log in to reply.