Question 1

How to scrape JavaScript pages with MetaInspector?

Accepted Answer

MetaInspector does not execute JavaScript, so for JS-heavy pages, you need to use external tools like headless browsers (e.g., Selenium or Puppeteer) to pre-render the page, then pass the HTML to MetaInspector using the :document option for parsing.

Question 2

MetaInspector vs Nokogiri for web scraping?

Accepted Answer

MetaInspector is built on Nokogiri and provides a higher-level API for common tasks like metadata extraction, while Nokogiri offers raw HTML parsing control. Choose MetaInspector for convenience and built-in features; use Nokogiri if you need fine-grained, custom parsing without the overhead.

Question 3

How to make MetaInspector scrape faster?

Accepted Answer

Disable image downloading with download_images: false, adjust timeouts and retries to lower values, and implement response caching using faraday_http_cache to reduce redundant network requests and speed up repeated scrapes.

Question 4

Does MetaInspector support proxy servers?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can configure proxies by passing faraday_options with proxy settings, such as { proxy: { uri: 'http://proxy.example.com' } }, allowing MetaInspector to route requests through proxy servers for anonymity or access control.

Question 5

How to extract custom HTML elements with MetaInspector?

Accepted Answer

Use the page.parsed method to access the full Nokogiri document, then apply Nokogiri selectors (e.g., CSS or XPath) to extract any elements beyond the built-in methods like links or images.

Question 6

What are best practices for error handling in MetaInspector?

Accepted Answer

Rescue specific exceptions like MetaInspector::TimeoutError and MetaInspector::RequestError in your code, implement retry logic with the :retries option, and use fallback strategies such as logging or queueing failed URLs for later attempts.

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