Web Scraping Without Code

There are many tools that can be used to create full-featured software. They can do anything you want. Without code.

You might think: what if I need something complex, like a web scraper? That’s too complicated, right?

To build a web scraper, you need to create a code block to load the page. Then you need another module to parse it. Then you need to create another block to work with that information and perform actions. Additionally, you need to find ways to handle IP blocks. Even worse, you may need to interact with the target page. Click buttons, wait for elements to appear, take screenshots.

That’s a lot of work. And yet, you can create a web scraping tool without code.

The magic of building a no-code web scraper lies in using APIs and services to handle the heavy lifting. And even if you know how to code, using an API is much simpler.

That is our goal today. We’ll explore many aspects of no-code web scraping for coders and non-coders alike.

Through numerous real-life examples, you’ll see how no-code web scraping tools can be useful. You’ll also learn how using a no-code web scraper compares to coding a web scraping application. By the end, you’ll understand why and how you can use no-code web scraping to take your projects to the next level.

What is No-Code

No-code tools allow you to build software without writing code. That might sound like a distant reality, but of course, we know one of the most popular no-code tools: Microsoft Excel. Sounds strange, but it makes sense. No-code tools give you the ability to solve unique tasks using pre-built functions.

In Excel, you don’t need to know what the “AVERAGE” formula does under the hood. You just call the function, pass variables, and see the result. The same applies to both simple and complex functions. Sums, lookups, searches, If statements.

There’s another interesting aspect of no-code tools: they are useful even for coders.

If you don’t believe me, think of it this way: I’m sure you know how to add a few numbers if you wanted to. You could do it with a pen and paper. But it’s much easier to just add the numbers in a spreadsheet and call SUM().

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The same logic applies to code.

If you need something very specific, there are ways to extend the built-in functions. In Excel, you can create macros or use VBA. In no-code tools, you can use code snippets or connect to external services. If you don’t know how to code, you can use ready-made tools, plug in different functions, and build something even if you don’t know how to do it from scratch. If you know how to code, you can use a no-code tool as a starting point and build only the features you need.

You won’t have to reinvent the wheel.

Another useful feature is visual builders. Most no-code tools have a drag-and-drop interface, so you don’t even need to know the names of functions.

Of course, this approach has its limitations.

• Customization: It depends on the tool, but it likely imposes limits on what you can do to stay within its controlled environment.
• Performance: If the tool is highly customizable, it’s usually not very optimized for the specific task you’re trying to solve.

In other words, quite often you can’t make it scale to millions and millions of users.

But most likely, by the time performance becomes an issue, you’ll be ready to invest in a custom solution.

Thus, no-code tools are great for quickly building software. They’re excellent for creating MVPs and internal tools. But don’t limit yourself to that.

You can even use them to build commercial tools. You can sell, deliver results, and move to custom solutions when you’re ready.

Why You Should Build a Web Scraping Tool Without Code

Web scraping is the process of downloading a website’s content as if you were a visitor. So a web scraper loads a page and has all its data ready for use in other actions.

This technique allows you to accomplish many tasks and save a lot of time. Instead of manually checking websites, you can use a web scraper to fetch that information and do what you need automatically.

Here are a few use cases for web scraping in your business:

• Price monitoring – You can track stock or product prices anywhere.
• Lead generation – You can automatically download contact information from websites and keep it up to date.
• SEO ranking – You can check your rankings in Google search results for specific jobs, specific articles, track your main competitors.
• Reviews and testimonials – You can get real reviews from external sites like Amazon or TrustPilot.
• Headhunting & HR – You can track talent and check their employment status.
• Competitor analysis – You can monitor changes on competitors’ websites to know about new products, services, or specification changes.
• News digest – You can combine multiple news sources into one report to see all headlines at a glance.
• Social media management – You can load social media profiles and check followers, likes, comments, mentions.
• Automation – You can load and interact with pages, allowing you to automate tasks like report generation, database cleaning, content migration.

Despite its usefulness, web scraping is one of the most complex tasks in software development. You have to deal with many variables like different code structures, IP bans, page interactions, and browser management.

This is where APIs come in. You can simply tell the API what to load—the page URL—and get the result. You don’t have to solve all those problems.

Now that you can just send commands to a web scraping API, you can create a no-code web scraping tool consisting of just two components:

• A module that sends information to the API based on what you want to retrieve
• A module that reads the information received from the API and does what you want with it

Both of these tasks are usually built into any no-code builder.

For example, if you use Make (formerly Integromat), you can use their “data storage” module for the first component and a connector to perform the desired action.

But there is one secret that changes the game for no-code web scraping. You are not limited to just loading content. You can interact with it.

Thus, with a web scraper, you can automate the actions you need. You can schedule tasks that otherwise couldn’t be scheduled. Automate purchases when prices drop. You can submit forms, click buttons. Everything you do as a user, you can automate with a web scraper.

Let’s look at how you can actually build a no-code web scraper.

Setting Everything Up

Now you have some ideas about how web scraping can help you. Let’s bring those ideas to life with concrete examples.

Besides showing you how to create your own no-code web scraper, you’ll see how difficult it is to build these elements with coding.

Let’s say you want to load a “Products on Sale” page. You can browse the product list, prices, and even place an order. But first you need to choose the tools.

You can set up each action you want to perform using the appropriate fields. Additionally, you can copy the API call from the right-hand field into your software or server.

Loading an Element with CSS Selectors – Data Extraction

You can use regular expressions. That might work if your page is static, but it can still produce incorrect results. Not to mention that creating regex itself is quite complex, unlike simple CSS selectors.

Another option is to use a real code parser and browser, then load the desired element with it. The advantage is that you can run the page just like a regular user, including JavaScript code. The downside is the need for third-party libraries, which is not always user-friendly and often requires significant CPU resources.

Returning to data extraction options, you are not limited to just getting the content of an element using CSS.

Here are your options:

• Load the text content of a tag (default) – “output”: “text”
• Load the HTML content of a tag – “output”: “html”
• Load one of the tag’s attributes – “output”: “@attributeName”
• Load only the first matching element (default) – “type”: “item”
• Load all matching elements – “type”: “list”
• Load clean text (default) – “clean”: true
• Load raw text – “clean”: false

Additionally, you can nest rules using the “output” option. You can make the returned JSON exactly in the format and nesting you need.

Here’s an example of loading data from our demo page, combining all these elements. You can load the page title (h1), then load the list of products for sale, returning their names, prices, and the `alt` attribute of their images.

{

    “title”: “h1”,

    “products”: {

        “selector”: “.product”,

        “type”: “list”,

        “output”: {

             “product”: “h2”,

             “price”: “.newPrice”,

             “”: {

                 “selector”: “img”,

                 “output”: “@alt”

             }

        }

    }

}

{

    “title”: “Products on Sale”,

    “products”: [

    {

    “product”: “Flying Ninja”,

    “price”: “99.00”,

    “”: “ninja”

    },

    {

    “product”: “Brown Fox”,

    “price”: “199.00”,

    “”: “fox”

    }

    ]

}

{

    “instructions”: [

       { “click”: “#buttonId”}

    ]

}

• Click a button – {“click”: “CSS SELECTOR”}
• Wait a fixed time (ms) – {“wait”: 2000}
• Wait for a specific element to load – {“wait_for”: “CSS SELECTOR”}
• Wait for an element and click it – {“wait_for_and_click”: “CSS SELECTOR”}
• Scroll by X pixels – {“scroll_x”: 1000}
• Scroll by Y pixels – {“scroll_y”: 1000}
• Fill a form field – {“fill”: [“CSS SELECTOR”, “VALUE”]}
• Execute custom JS code – {“evaluate”: “console.log(‘foo’)”}

// Get the element and price

 

var price = document.querySelectorAll(“.product .newPrice”)[1].textContent;

 

// Convert the price to a float

 

price = Number(price.replace(/[^0-9.-]+/g, “”));

 

// Check price level

 

if ( price < 800) {

   // If the price is good, buy it

   document.querySelectorAll(“.product .buy”)[1].click()

   // Add a note to the #return element (or any element) with the message we want to see

   document.querySelectorAll(“#return”)[0].textContent = “Price: “ + price + “ - purchased “;

} else {

   document.querySelectorAll(“#return”)[0].textContent = “Price: “ + price + “ - not purchased “;

}

{

    “instructions”:[

          {“evaluate”: “var price=document.querySelectorAll(‘.product .newPrice’)[1].textContent;(price=Number(price.replace(/[^0-9.-]+/g,’’)))<800?(document.querySelectorAll(‘.product .buy’)[1].click(),document.querySelectorAll(‘h1’)[0].textContent=‘Price: ‘+price+‘ - purchased ‘):document.querySelectorAll(‘h1’)[0].textContent=‘Price: ‘+price+‘ - not purchased ‘;”}

    ]

}

{

    “result”: “h1”

}