node-crawlervsmechanize
node-crawler is a popular web scraping library for Node.js that allows you to easily navigate and extract data from websites. It has a simple API and supports concurrency, making it efficient for scraping large numbers of pages.
Features:
- Server-side DOM & automatic jQuery insertion with Cheerio (default) or JSDOM,
- Configurable pool size and retries,
- Control rate limit,
- Priority queue of requests,
- forceUTF8 mode to let crawler deal for you with charset detection and conversion,
- Compatible with 4.x or newer version.
- Http2 support
- Proxy support
Mechanize is a Ruby library for automating interaction with websites. It automatically stores and sends cookies, follows redirects, and can submit forms — making it behave like a web browser without needing an actual browser engine.
Key features include:
- Automatic cookie management Stores cookies received from servers and sends them back on subsequent requests, maintaining session state across multiple pages.
- Form handling Can find, fill in, and submit HTML forms programmatically. Supports text inputs, selects, checkboxes, radio buttons, and file uploads.
- Link following Navigate through pages by clicking links using their text content, CSS selectors, or href patterns.
- History and back/forward Maintains a browsing history, allowing you to go back and forward through visited pages.
- HTTP authentication Supports basic and digest HTTP authentication.
- Proxy support Can route requests through HTTP proxies.
- Redirect handling Automatically follows HTTP redirects (configurable).
Mechanize is one of the oldest and most established web interaction libraries in Ruby. It is best suited for scraping traditional server-rendered websites with forms and multi-page workflows. For JavaScript-heavy sites, a browser automation tool like Selenium or Playwright is recommended instead.
Highlights
Example Use
This is a test
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