Getting DOM node text with Puppeteer and headless Chrome

user_4794 0
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I'm trying to use headless Chrome and Puppeteer to run our Javascript tests, but I can't extract the results from the page. Based on this answer, it looks like I should use page.evaluate(). That section even has an example that looks like what I need.

const bodyHandle = await page.$('body');
const html = await page.evaluate(body => body.innerHTML, bodyHandle);
await bodyHandle.dispose();

As a full example, I tried to convert that to a script that will extract my name from my user profile on Stack Overflow. Our project is using Node 6, so I converted the await expressions to use .then().

const puppeteer = require('puppeteer');

puppeteer.launch().then(function(browser) {
    browser.newPage().then(function(page) {
        page.goto('https://stackoverflow.com/users/4794').then(function() {
            page.$('h2.user-card-name').then(function(heading_handle) {
                page.evaluate(function(heading) {
                    return heading.innerText;
                }, heading_handle).then(function(result) {
                    console.info(result);
                    browser.close();
                }, function(error) {
                    console.error(error);
                    browser.close();
                });
            });
        });
    });
});

When I run that, I get this error:

$ node get_user.js 
TypeError: Converting circular structure to JSON
    at Object.stringify (native)
    at args.map.x (/mnt/data/don/git/Kive/node_modules/puppeteer/node6/helper.js:30:43)
    at Array.map (native)
    at Function.evaluationString (/mnt/data/don/git/Kive/node_modules/puppeteer/node6/helper.js:30:29)
    at Frame.<anonymous> (/mnt/data/don/git/Kive/node_modules/puppeteer/node6/FrameManager.js:376:31)
    at next (native)
    at step (/mnt/data/don/git/Kive/node_modules/puppeteer/node6/FrameManager.js:355:24)
    at Promise (/mnt/data/don/git/Kive/node_modules/puppeteer/node6/FrameManager.js:373:12)
    at fn (/mnt/data/don/git/Kive/node_modules/puppeteer/node6/FrameManager.js:351:10)
    at Frame._rawEvaluate (/mnt/data/don/git/Kive/node_modules/puppeteer/node6/FrameManager.js:375:3)

The problem seems to be with serializing the input parameter to page.evaluate(). I can pass in strings and numbers, but not element handles. Is the example wrong, or is it a problem with Node 6? How can I extract the text of a DOM node?

google-chrome-headless puppeteer node.js
4 Answers

Using await/async and $eval, the syntax looks like the following:

await page.goto('https://stackoverflow.com/users/4794')
const nameElement = await context.page.$eval('h2.user-card-name', el => el.text())
console.log(nameElement)
user_6899710

I use page.$eval

const text = await page.$eval('h2.user-card-name', el => el.innerText );
console.log(text);
user_87063890

I had success using the following:

const browser = await puppeteer.launch();
try {
  const page = await browser.newPage();
  await page.goto(url);
  await page.waitFor(2000);
  let html_content = await page.evaluate(el => el.innerHTML, await page.$('.element-class-name'));
  console.log(html_content);
} catch (err) {
  console.log(err);
}

Hope it helps.

user_19870220
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