Question

Return the data instead of writing to file

Posted on March 30, 2023
Node.js
Asked by arjan_hes

Hi,

Thanks for the very good tutorial. I am trying to return the data instead of saving it in a file. This, so I can call this script from another js file and use the data there.

I tried in index.js to add return scraperController(browserInstance) and in the pageController.js use a return statement in the try section. This doesn’t work however.

Can you give me any hints?

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Bobby Iliev

Site Moderator

• April 1, 2023

Accepted Answer

Hi there,

I believe that you should be able to return the scraped data instead of writing it to a file by just returning the scrapedData object from the scrapeAll function, eg:

const pageScraper = require('./pageScraper');

async function scrapeAll(browserInstance) {
  let browser;
  try {
    browser = await browserInstance;
    let scrapedData = {};
    scrapedData['Travel'] = await pageScraper.scraper(browser, 'Travel');
    scrapedData['HistoricalFiction'] = await pageScraper.scraper(browser, 'Historical Fiction');
    scrapedData['Mystery'] = await pageScraper.scraper(browser, 'Mystery');
    await browser.close();
    console.log("The data has been scraped successfully!");
    return scrapedData;
  } catch (err) {
    console.log("Could not resolve the browser instance => ", err);
  }
}

module.exports = (browserInstance) => scrapeAll(browserInstance);

After that, you can import the function to other files and call it to return the scrapedData object, so that you can use in other methods, eg:

const scrapeAll = require('./path/to/your/scrapeAllFile');
const browserInstance = ...; // Set up your browser instance here (e.g., using Puppeteer)

(async () => {
  const scrapedData = await scrapeAll(browserInstance);
  console.log('Scraped data:', scrapedData);

  // Use the scraped data in other methods
})();