I’m having trouble with a web scraping project using Flutter. The scraping library works fine in a Windows app but fails in a web app. When I try to start the scraper with var scraper = await webScraper.init(headless: true);, I get a weird error. It says something about an unsupported operation and Platform._environment. The error trace is super long and confusing. I’m using the latest stable Flutter version (3.16.9) on Windows 10. Any ideas why this might be happening or how to fix it? I’m pretty stuck here.
hey man, i feel ur pain. web scraping in flutter web is a real headache. have u tried using the ‘http’ package to fetch the html and then parse it manually? it’s not as fancy, but it might work better for web apps. just remember to handle cors issues if they pop up. good luck!
I’ve run into similar issues when trying to use web scraping libraries in Flutter web apps. The problem often stems from the fact that web apps run in a browser environment, which has different capabilities and restrictions compared to native platforms.
For web scraping in Flutter web, you might need to take a different approach. Instead of using a library that relies on platform-specific features, consider using a combination of HTTP requests and HTML parsing. The ‘http’ package for making requests and ‘html’ package for parsing can be good alternatives.
If you absolutely need to use a specific scraping library, you might want to look into setting up a backend service that handles the scraping and exposes an API for your Flutter web app to consume. This way, you can keep the scraping logic server-side where there are fewer restrictions.
Remember to always respect website terms of service and robots.txt files when scraping. Good luck with your project!
Web scraping in Flutter web can be tricky due to browser limitations. I’ve found that using a server-side solution is often more reliable. Consider setting up a Node.js or Python backend to handle the scraping tasks, then create a simple API for your Flutter web app to interact with. This approach bypasses browser restrictions and allows you to use more powerful scraping tools.
Another option is to explore browser-compatible scraping libraries specifically designed for web environments. Some developers have had success with packages like ‘web_scraper’ or ‘html’ in combination with ‘http’ for basic scraping tasks.
If you’re set on client-side scraping, you might need to adjust your code to work within the constraints of web browsers. This could involve using CORS proxies or limiting your scraping to websites that allow it. Remember to always scrape responsibly and respect website policies.