I need to build a web scraping tool that runs on Google App Engine. My project requires fetching web content, extracting data from HTML pages, and performing analysis on the collected information. I’m looking for headless browser options that are compatible with GAE’s runtime environment. I’ve heard about HTMLUnit but I’m not certain if it will function properly within GAE’s constraints. What browser automation libraries or headless solutions work reliably on App Engine? Are there any specific configurations or workarounds needed to make them function correctly?
Had the same issues with scraping tools on GAE. HTMLUnit works but you’ll hit memory limits and timeouts on complex pages. I switched to a hybrid setup - GAE handles orchestration and data processing, Cloud Run or Cloud Functions do the browser automation. If you’re stuck with GAE standard, try simple HTTP requests with requests-html or just requests + BeautifulSoup. GAE standard can’t run full browser instances because of sandboxing. For basic scraping without heavy JS rendering, this covers most cases and stays within GAE’s limits.
puppeteer works on GAE flexible but not for standard. if you’re on GAE standard, selenium is a no-go due to sandbox limits. you might consider using cloud tasks to reach out to external scraping services. personally, i switched from GAE to scrapy on compute engine, way better for browser automation.
Been scraping on GAE for two years. GAE standard’s sandboxed runtime kills browser automation - you can’t do much. I switched to Cloud Functions for lightweight scrapers, triggered by GAE through pub/sub. Jsoup handles simple HTML parsing fine within GAE’s memory limits, but you can’t run browser instances. GAE standard’s 60-second timeout will destroy complex scraping jobs anyway. Why do you need GAE specifically? Other GCP services handle browser automation way better.