People find DSLs valuable because a well-designed DSL can be much easier to program with than a traditional library. This improves programmer productivity, which is always valuable.
Martin Fowler
The Skrape{it} DSL1 is the recommended way of using the library. It offers the highest level of features and usability.
The DSL should be nearly self-explaining. Depending on your use-case here is an example with explanations on how to use skrape{it} to write automated tests that validates an endpoint or an URL that is returning HTML:
class CompleteSkrapeItExampleTest {
@Test
internal fun `dsl can skrape by url`() {
skrape {
request { // configure the fetcher aka http clients request
url = "http://localhost:8080/example"
method = GET // optional -> defaults to GET
timeout = 5000 // optional -> defaults to 5000ms
followRedirects = true // optional -> defaults to true
userAgent = "some custom user agent" // optional -> defaults to "Mozilla/5.0 skrape.it"
cookies = mapOf("some-cookie-name" to "some-value") // optional
headers = mapOf("some-custom-header" to "some-value") // optional
}
extract { // execute the request and invoke its results
htmlDocument { // parse the response body to a skrape it Doc object
// all offical html and html5 elements are supported by the DSL
div {
withClass = "foo" and "bar" and "fizz" and "buzz"
withAttribute = "some-key" to "some-value"
// will create css-query div.foo.bar.fizz.buzz[some-key='some-value']
findFirst { // will find the first matching occurence
text toBe "div with class foo"
}
findAll { // will find the all matching occurences
toBePresentExactlyOnce()
}
}
// can handle custom tags as well
"a-custom-tag" {
findFirst {
text toBe "i'm a custom html5 tag"
}
}
// can handle custom tags written in css selctor query syntax
"div.foo.bar.fizz.buzz" {
findFirst {
text toBe "div with class foo"
}
}
// can handle custom tags and add selector specificas via DSL
"div.foo" {
withClass = "bar" and "fizz" and "buzz"
findFirst {
text toBe "div with class foo"
}
}
}
}
}
}
}
To learn more about the possible request-options please have a look here:
To learn more about the parsing html and working with elements please have a look here:
To learn more about the build-in matchers please have a look here:
Further Testing Example:
Further information on what is the best way to actually scrape the content of an webpage and work with that data can be found here:
