I’m building a web scraper that needs to handle JavaScript-heavy sites across multiple threads. I’ve tested several headless browsers but ran into issues with each one.
Some options I tried:
HtmlUnit has weak JavaScript execution
QWebPage from QtWebKit throws errors when instantiated from different threads
PhantomJS requires spawning separate processes which slows things down
Awesomium crashes in multi-threaded environments
I need a headless browser that can handle modern JavaScript and create new instances safely from multiple threads. Any programming language works for me. What are my best options for this type of concurrent web scraping?
I’ve been using Chrome headless with Puppeteer for this - works great. Each Puppeteer instance gets its own process, so you won’t hit those threading issues other browsers have. Way more efficient than PhantomJS too since Chrome’s V8 engine handles JavaScript much better. I usually run 5-10 instances at once without problems. Just manage your browser pool right and close instances when you’re done or you’ll get memory leaks. Selenium with headless Chrome works too if you like that API better, but Puppeteer gives you way more control over the browser.
Playwright’s perfect for this. It handles browser isolation and concurrent operations way better than what you’ve tried. You can either spawn multiple browser instances or use contexts within one instance - both work great with threading. Since it runs on real browser engines (Chromium, Firefox, WebKit), JavaScript execution is rock solid. I usually set up a pool of browser contexts instead of full instances to save resources. The API’s cleaner than Selenium and way more stable than those older tools. Performance blows PhantomJS out of the water, and you won’t get those annoying crashes Awesomium throws at you with multi-threading.
u should look into selenium grid! it can scale out across diff machines & manage browsr instances realiably. less headaches with threading issues, plus it works well for heavy js sites. yeah, it takes some time to set up but totally worth it