Page content is loaded with JavaScript and Jsoup doesn't see it

Question

One block on the page is filled with content by JavaScript and after loading page with Jsoup there is none of that inforamtion. Is there a way to get also JavaScript generated content when parsing page with Jsoup?

Can't paste page code here, since it is too long: http://pastebin.com/qw4Rfqgw

Here's element which content I need: <div id='tags_list'></div>

I need to get this information in Java. Preferably using Jsoup. Element is field with help of JavaScript:

<div id="tags_list">
    <a href="/tagsc0t20099.html" style="font-size:14;">разведчик</a>
    <a href="/tagsc0t1879.html" style="font-size:14;">Sr</a>
    <a href="/tagsc0t3140.html" style="font-size:14;">стратегический</a>
</div>

Java code:

import org.jsoup.Jsoup;
import org.jsoup.nodes.Document;
import org.jsoup.nodes.Element;
import org.jsoup.select.Elements;

import java.io.IOException;

public class Test
{
    public static void main( String[] args )
    {
        try
        {
            Document Doc = Jsoup.connect( "http://www.bestreferat.ru/referat-32558.html" ).get();
            Elements Tags = Doc.select( "#tags_list a" );

            for ( Element Tag : Tags )
            {
                System.out.println( Tag.text() );
            }
        }
        catch ( IOException e )
        {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

score 31 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:10

31

JSoup is an HTML parser, not some kind of embedded browser engine. This means that it's completely unaware of any content that is added to the DOM by Javascript after the initial page load.

To get access to that type of content you will need an embedded browser component, there are a number of discussions on SO regarding that kind of component, eg Is there a way to embed a browser in Java?

edited May 23 '17 at 12:10

Community

1
1

answered Sep 20 '11 at 17:42

fvu

32,488
6
61
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4

Any Other `libs` available for `Android` to get Page content is loaded with `javascript`? – Nikunj Paradva Mar 24 '18 at 09:56

ilu · Answer 2 · 2017-10-12T10:45:41.803

Solved in my case with com.codeborne.phantomjsdriver NOTE: it is groovy code.

pom.xml

        <dependency>
          <groupId>com.codeborne</groupId>
          <artifactId>phantomjsdriver</artifactId>
          <version> <here goes last version> </version>
        </dependency>

PhantomJsUtils.groovy

import org.jsoup.Jsoup
import org.jsoup.nodes.Document
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver
import org.openqa.selenium.phantomjs.PhantomJSDriver

class PhantomJsUtils {
    private static String filePath = 'data/temp/';

    public static Document renderPage(String filePath) {
        System.setProperty("phantomjs.binary.path", 'libs/phantomjs') // path to bin file. NOTE: platform dependent
        WebDriver ghostDriver = new PhantomJSDriver();
        try {
            ghostDriver.get(filePath);
            return Jsoup.parse(ghostDriver.getPageSource());
        } finally {
            ghostDriver.quit();
        }
    }

    public static Document renderPage(Document doc) {
        String tmpFileName = "$filePath${Calendar.getInstance().timeInMillis}.html";
        FileUtils.writeToFile(tmpFileName, doc.toString());
        return renderPage(tmpFileName);
    }
}

ClassInProject.groovy

Document doc = PhantomJsUtils.renderPage(Jsoup.parse(yourSource))

1. Android app case: I'm not sure it can help. Also I've never met same behavior in android view. — ilu, Mar 28 '18 at 15:08
2. Android web case: The problem of Phantomjs driver solution: you don't run UI driver. In fact phantom driver is "a webkit which runs headless with an inbuilt JavaScript API". it is a no UI driver. Usually I use it for collecting data only. You cannot be sure, that UI view is correct. — ilu, Mar 28 '18 at 15:17

score 12 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:02

You need to understand what is happening :

When you query a page from a website, whether using Jsoup or your browser, what gets sent back to you is some HTML. Jsoup is able to parse that.
However, most websites include Javascript in that HTML, or linked from that HTML, which will populate the page with content. Your browser is able to execute the Javascript, and thus populate the page. Jsoup is not.

The way to understand this is the following : parsing HTML code is easy. Executing Javascript code and updating corresponding HTML code is a lot more complex, and is the work of a browser.

Here are some solutions for this kind of problems:

If you can find what are the Ajax calls that Javascript code is making, that is loading content, you might be able to use the URL of these calls with Jsoup. In order to do that, use Developer Tools from your browser. But this is not guaranteed to work:
- it might be that the url is dynamic, and depends on what is on the page at that time
- if the content is not public, cookies will be involved, and simply querying the resource URL will not be enough
In these cases, you will need to "simulate" the work of a browser. Fortunately, such tools exist. The one I know, and recommend, is PhantomJS. It works with Javascript, and you would need to launch it from Java by starting a new process. If you want to stick to Java, this post lists some Java alternatives.

Sully · Answer 4 · 2020-06-07T19:29:15.897

You can use a combination of JSoup and HtmlUnit to get the page contents after JavaScript scripts are done loading.

pom.xml

<dependency>
    <groupId>net.sourceforge.htmlunit</groupId>
    <artifactId>htmlunit</artifactId>
    <version>3.35</version>
</dependency>

Simple Example From file https://riptutorial.com/jsoup/example/16274/parsing-javascript-generated-page-with-jsoup-and-htmunit

// load page using HTML Unit and fire scripts
WebClient webClient2 = new WebClient();
HtmlPage myPage = webClient2.getPage(new File("page.html").toURI().toURL());

// convert page to generated HTML and convert to document
Document doc = Jsoup.parse(myPage.asXml());

// iterate row and col
for (Element row : doc.select("table#data > tbody > tr"))
    for (Element col : row.select("td"))
        // print results
        System.out.println(col.ownText());

// clean up resources        
webClient2.close();

A Complex Example: Load login, get Session and CSRF, then post and wait for home page to finish loading (15 seconds)

import java.io.IOException;
import java.net.HttpCookie;
import java.net.MalformedURLException;
import java.net.URL;

import org.jsoup.Connection;
import org.jsoup.Connection.Method;
import org.jsoup.Jsoup;
import org.jsoup.nodes.Document;

import com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.FailingHttpStatusCodeException;
import com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.HttpMethod;
import com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.NicelyResynchronizingAjaxController;
import com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.WebClient;
import com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.WebRequest;
import com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.html.HtmlPage;

//JSoup load Login Page and get Session Details
Connection.Response res = Jsoup.connect("https://loginpage").method(Method.GET).execute();

String sessionId = res.cookie("findSESSION");
String csrf = res.cookie("findCSRF");

HttpCookie cookie = new HttpCookie("findCSRF", csrf);
cookie.setDomain("domain.url");
cookie.setPath("/path");

WebClient webClient = new WebClient();
webClient.addCookie(cookie.toString(),
            new URL("https://url"),
            "https://referrer");

// Add other cookies/ Session ...

webClient.getOptions().setJavaScriptEnabled(true);
webClient.getOptions().setCssEnabled(false);
webClient.getOptions().setUseInsecureSSL(true);
webClient.getOptions().setThrowExceptionOnFailingStatusCode(false);
webClient.getCookieManager().setCookiesEnabled(true);
webClient.setAjaxController(new NicelyResynchronizingAjaxController());
// Wait time
webClient.waitForBackgroundJavaScript(15000);
webClient.getOptions().setThrowExceptionOnScriptError(false);

URL url = new URL("https://login.path");
WebRequest requestSettings = new WebRequest(url, HttpMethod.POST);

requestSettings.setRequestBody("user=234&pass=sdsdc&CSRFToken="+csrf);
HtmlPage page = webClient.getPage(requestSettings);

// Wait
synchronized (page) {
    try {
        page.wait(15000);
    } catch (InterruptedException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
}

// Parse logged in page as needed
Document doc = Jsoup.parse(page.asXml());

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 23 '13 at 10:18

I fact there is a "way"! Maybe it is more "a workaround" than a "way... The code below checks both for meta attribute "REFRESH" and javascript redirects... If either of them exists RedirectedUrl variable is set. So you know your target... Then you can retrieve the target page and go on...

    String RedirectedUrl=null;
    Elements meta = page.select("html head meta");
    if (meta.attr("http-equiv").contains("REFRESH")) {
        RedirectedUrl = meta.attr("content").split("=")[1];
    } else {
        if (page.toString().contains("window.location.href")) {
            meta = page.select("script");
            for (Element script:meta) {
                String s = script.data();
                if (!s.isEmpty() && s.startsWith("window.location.href")) {
                    int start = s.indexOf("=");
                    int end = s.indexOf(";");
                    if (start>0 && end >start) {
                        s = s.substring(start+1,end);
                        s =s.replace("'", "").replace("\"", "");        
                        RedirectedUrl = s.trim();
                        break;
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }

... now retrieve the redirected page again...

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Jan 16 '20 at 09:23

It is possible by combining JSoup with another framework to interpret the webpage, in my example here I'm using HtmlUnit.

import org.jsoup.Jsoup;
import org.jsoup.nodes.Document;
import org.jsoup.nodes.Element;
import org.jsoup.select.Elements;

import com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.WebClient;
import com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.html.HtmlPage;

...

WebClient webClient = new WebClient();
HtmlPage myPage = webClient.getPage(URL);

Document document = Jsoup.parse(myPage.asXml());
Elements otherLinks = document.select("a[href]");

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Dec 06 '18 at 14:27

0

After specifying user agent, my problem is solved.

https://github.com/jhy/jsoup/issues/287#issuecomment-12769155

answered Dec 06 '18 at 14:27

emon

1,629
1
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score -7 · Answer 8 · edited Jul 02 '17 at 14:09

-7

Try:

Document Doc = Jsoup.connect(url)
    .header("Accept-Encoding", "gzip, deflate")
    .userAgent("Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:23.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/23.0")
    .maxBodySize(0)
    .timeout(600000)
    .get();

edited Jul 02 '17 at 14:09

Tiger-222

6,677
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answered Jul 02 '17 at 13:27

Partha Pratim Dutta

1
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Page content is loaded with JavaScript and Jsoup doesn't see it

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