Written by Shrawan Choudhary
Jun 9, 2022 ·
2 min read
A puppeteer is essentially an automation tool by Google used to automate website tests. It is also popularly used for web scraping, generating screenshots and PDFs, monitoring networks, simulating numerous browsers on a single device, automating form submissions, diagnosing performance issues, etc.
This article defines what Puppeteer is and its functions, the best Puppeteer proxies, and why you need them.
Puppeteer, also known as Headless Chrome Node API, is a Node library offering an advanced Application Programming Interface (API) to control headless and non-headless browsers, Chromium and Chrome. A headless browser is one without a user interface (UI), allowing you to have automated control of web pages.
A proxy acts as a server connecting users to the internet while hiding their identity. This means you can surf the net via a proxy server instead of sending requests directly to the websites of interest.
Using a Puppeteer proxy offers numerous benefits:
Puppeteer is headless by default and helpful in automating web testing and scraping operations. This web tool lacks a user interface and other components which reveal user information to the target websites. As such, Puppeteer helps you avoid getting blocked and increases your web scraping success rate.
Unlike other headless browsers, Puppeteer is easy to use as it doesn’t require advanced technical skills. It was built for the Chrome browser and is used to test and automate desktop applications while simulating real-user activity.
A headless browser can access web pages without displaying them to the user and can move content from a webpage to another program. This tool can also analyze and interpret web pages to represent the real browser perspective without requiring cost-incurred tests.
Headless browser testing allows you to run tests accurately, efficiently, and on a large scale. These tests are essential for software quality assurance (QA), i.e., establishing quality standards, implementing checks, and fixing problems, so the end product meets the expected standards. The tests are automated and run without any human-user interaction.
Below are two key advantages of adopting headless browser tests:
Regular browsers typically take time to load JavaScript, CSS, and open HTML. Headless browsers perform approximately 2-15 times faster than real browsers since they don’t require starting up a browser graphical user interface (GUI).
When scraping websites, headless browsers don’t require you to start up a website manually. Instead, you can visit it heedlessly and scrape the HTML.
Residential proxies are the most reliable option if you want to use Puppeteer for web automation, scraping, or rendering sites. These proxies allow you to have organic connections. Otherwise, the activities mentioned above can easily be detected by anti-bot systems, and your IP address will be banned!
Residential proxies use real IP addresses from ISPs by allowing you to select a specific location and surf the web like a resident in that area. The proxies are impossible to detect and protect users from web traffic while hiding their IP addresses.
While any proxy will work with Puppeteer, the best solution is to use residential proxies. It’s best to avoid using free proxies as they are often unreliable and can stop working when you need them the most. Instead, you can order residential proxies online from providers like IPRoyal and enjoy stress-free web scraping, fast speeds, and access to geo-restricted content.
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