Return the data instead of writing to file

Posted on March 30, 2023

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?

This textbox defaults to using Markdown to format your answer.

You can type !ref in this text area to quickly search our full set of tutorials, documentation & marketplace offerings and insert the link!

These answers are provided by our Community. If you find them useful, show some love by clicking the heart. If you run into issues leave a comment, or add your own answer to help others.

Bobby

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
})();