Using Playwright with a Proxy
Playwright is a popular framework for web scraping and testing, introduced by Microsoft in 2020. Playwright can test in graphical user interface or headless browser.
Features and Benefits
Cross-Browser Support
Playwright offers cross-browser functionality through automation of web browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox, and Safari Playwright. You can scrape data from websites regardless of their browser technology.
Headless Browsing
Playwright can operate in a headless mode, running the browser without a graphical user interface (GUI). The headless function loads faster, speeds up web scraping, and saves on resource usage.
Page Interaction
Playwright can emulate human user interactions such as clicking buttons, filling forms, navigating between pages, and scrolling.
Handling Dynamic Content
Playwright can handle websites that use JavaScript to load data dynamically. It allows you to wait for certain elements to load before scraping them, delivering the most up-to-date content.
Intercepting Network Requests
Playwright allows interception & modification of network requests & responses. This helps to bypass restrictions, handle APIs directly, and scrape data that isn’t clearly visible on the webpage.
Automated Screenshots and PDFs
You can take screenshots or create PDFs of webpages, to document or capture a page’s appearance at a given point.
Programming Languages
- JavaScript/TypeScript: Playwright was developed in JavaScript. It is thought to work best in that language, with the most features and support.
- Python: Playwright for Python is highly popular for web scraping tasks because Python is a simple, easy-to-use language. Also, Python offers a wide array of other web scraping tools.
- C# and Java: Developers working in environments that require C# and Java have found Playwright easy to use.
Libraries
Playwright provides libraries that you can use in your code. It’s available as collections of code pre-written to perform specific tasks, and can save you hours of programming. It’s available as:
- Playwright for Node.js, designed to work seamlessly with Node.js.
- Playwright for Python, a wrapper for the Node.js version.
- Playwright for .NET, usable with C# and other .NET languages.
- Playwright for Java, allowing Java developers to leverage Playwright’s features.
Setting Up Playwright for Use on a Proxy
Installation
You can install Playwright with Node Package Manager:
In Python, you can install Playwright using pip:
Configuration
Configure Playwright to use with a proxy.
You can specify proxy settings when you launch a browser with Playwright. Below is an example from Python.
Asynchronous
Many Playwright users prefer asynchronous communication because it allows faster scraping operations — one operation doesn't have to wait for another to end before beginning itself. Below is an asynchronous configuration example, also in Python. It uses the asyncio library.
Testing the Installation
To test the installation before scraping activities, Playwright has several test configurations relating to proxy use. Have a look at https://playwright.dev/docs/test-configuration for examples including emulation, capture, browser options, and command line functions. Tests are run in browserless mode and results are displayed on your device screen.
Playwright also lets you test in UI mode. See https://playwright.dev/docs/test-ui-mode for details.
Test a Simple Request
Playwright has an API. Via the command page.request.get() you can test a simple HTTP request before using Playwright with ProxyMesh. Include a basic HTTP client library like requests in Python or axios in Node.js to make sure the proxy is working correctly. Here's a Python example:
You're ready to use Playwright with ProxyMesh.
For general information about web scraping, see our blog article A Short Introduction to Web Scraping.
For tips and tricks about using Playwright, see The Complete Guide to Playwright Web Scraping.