Is it possible to use jQuery selectors/DOM manipulation on the server-side using Node.js?
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4I wonder: Why use on the server-side while you can do it on the client-side?Inanc Gumus– Inanc Gumus2014-05-13 12:12:45 +00:00Commented May 13, 2014 at 12:12
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41Perhaps you might want to create a web scrapper that scraps specific information at regular intervals and stores the results in a database? This would not be as practical from the client-side.Trevor– Trevor2014-06-05 03:59:17 +00:00Commented Jun 5, 2014 at 3:59
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3You should also take a look at phantomjs, which allow you to emulate a browser server side with V8 engine.Dimitri Kopriwa– Dimitri Kopriwa2015-01-06 15:28:52 +00:00Commented Jan 6, 2015 at 15:28
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2@deeperx DOM manipulation on the server side could be useful when making a crawler. See this answer.Lucio Paiva– Lucio Paiva2015-07-11 19:45:08 +00:00Commented Jul 11, 2015 at 19:45
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YES - have a look at this answer - I prefer this over using cheerio, since you get the full power of jQuery selector.monika mevenkamp– monika mevenkamp2020-01-22 20:29:07 +00:00Commented Jan 22, 2020 at 20:29
21 Answers
Yes. First, install the dependencies
npm install jquery jsdom
then
var jsdom = require('jsdom');
const { JSDOM } = jsdom;
const { window } = new JSDOM();
const { document } = (new JSDOM('')).window;
global.document = document;
var $ = jQuery = require('jquery')(window);
See this answer.
4 Comments
Yes you can, using a library I created called nodeQuery
var Express = require('express')
, dnode = require('dnode')
, nQuery = require('nodeQuery')
, express = Express.createServer();
var app = function ($) {
$.on('ready', function () {
// do some stuff to the dom in real-time
$('body').append('Hello World');
$('body').append('<input type="text" />');
$('input').live('click', function () {
console.log('input clicked');
// ...
});
});
};
nQuery
.use(app);
express
.use(nQuery.middleware)
.use(Express.static(__dirname + '/public'))
.listen(3000);
dnode(nQuery.middleware).listen(express);
5 Comments
, express = Express.createServer(); and TypeError: Express.createServer is not a function any idea ?npm install --save express in your command prompt.At the time of writing there also is the maintained Cheerio.
Fast, flexible, and lean implementation of core jQuery designed specifically for the server.
4 Comments
:gt(1)A simple crawler using Cheerio
This is my formula to make a simple crawler in Node.js. It is the main reason for wanting to do DOM manipulation on the server side and probably it's the reason why you got here.
First, use request to download the page to be parsed. When the download is complete, handle it to cheerio and begin DOM manipulation just like using jQuery.
Working example:
var
request = require('request'),
cheerio = require('cheerio');
function parse(url) {
request(url, function (error, response, body) {
var
$ = cheerio.load(body);
$('.question-summary .question-hyperlink').each(function () {
console.info($(this).text());
});
})
}
parse('http://stackoverflow.com/');
This example will print to the console all top questions showing on SO home page. This is why I love Node.js and its community. It couldn't get easier than that :-)
Install dependencies:
npm install request cheerio
And run (assuming the script above is in file crawler.js):
node crawler.js
Encoding
Some pages will have non-english content in a certain encoding and you will need to decode it to UTF-8. For instance, a page in brazilian portuguese (or any other language of latin origin) will likely be encoded in ISO-8859-1 (a.k.a. "latin1"). When decoding is needed, I tell request not to interpret the content in any way and instead use iconv-lite to do the job.
Working example:
var
request = require('request'),
iconv = require('iconv-lite'),
cheerio = require('cheerio');
var
PAGE_ENCODING = 'utf-8'; // change to match page encoding
function parse(url) {
request({
url: url,
encoding: null // do not interpret content yet
}, function (error, response, body) {
var
$ = cheerio.load(iconv.decode(body, PAGE_ENCODING));
$('.question-summary .question-hyperlink').each(function () {
console.info($(this).text());
});
})
}
parse('http://stackoverflow.com/');
Before running, install dependencies:
npm install request iconv-lite cheerio
And then finally:
node crawler.js
Following links
The next step would be to follow links. Say you want to list all posters from each top question on SO. You have to first list all top questions (example above) and then enter each link, parsing each question's page to get the list of involved users.
When you start following links, a callback hell can begin. To avoid that, you should use some kind of promises, futures or whatever. I always keep async in my toolbelt. So, here is a full example of a crawler using async:
var
url = require('url'),
request = require('request'),
async = require('async'),
cheerio = require('cheerio');
var
baseUrl = 'http://stackoverflow.com/';
// Gets a page and returns a callback with a $ object
function getPage(url, parseFn) {
request({
url: url
}, function (error, response, body) {
parseFn(cheerio.load(body))
});
}
getPage(baseUrl, function ($) {
var
questions;
// Get list of questions
questions = $('.question-summary .question-hyperlink').map(function () {
return {
title: $(this).text(),
url: url.resolve(baseUrl, $(this).attr('href'))
};
}).get().slice(0, 5); // limit to the top 5 questions
// For each question
async.map(questions, function (question, questionDone) {
getPage(question.url, function ($$) {
// Get list of users
question.users = $$('.post-signature .user-details a').map(function () {
return $$(this).text();
}).get();
questionDone(null, question);
});
}, function (err, questionsWithPosters) {
// This function is called by async when all questions have been parsed
questionsWithPosters.forEach(function (question) {
// Prints each question along with its user list
console.info(question.title);
question.users.forEach(function (user) {
console.info('\t%s', user);
});
});
});
});
Before running:
npm install request async cheerio
Run a test:
node crawler.js
Sample output:
Is it possible to pause a Docker image build?
conradk
Thomasleveil
PHP Image Crop Issue
Elyor
Houston Molinar
Add two object in rails
user1670773
Makoto
max
Asymmetric encryption discrepancy - Android vs Java
Cookie Monster
Wand Maker
Objective-C: Adding 10 seconds to timer in SpriteKit
Christian K Rider
And that's the basic you should know to start making your own crawlers :-)
Libraries used
Comments
in 2016 things are way easier. install jquery to node.js with your console:
npm install jquery
bind it to the variable $ (for example - i am used to it) in your node.js code:
var $ = require("jquery");
do stuff:
$.ajax({
url: 'gimme_json.php',
dataType: 'json',
method: 'GET',
data: { "now" : true }
});
also works for gulp as it is based on node.js.
5 Comments
var $ = require("jquery"); $.ajax // undefined (Downvoted for the moment).npm install jquery first?> console.log(require("jquery").toString()); gives me the factory function: function ( w ) { if ( !w.document ) { throw new Error( "jQuery requires a window with a document" ); } return factory( w ); } I had to use the answer above with jsdom: stackoverflow.com/a/4129032/539490I believe the answer to this is now yes.
https://github.com/tmpvar/jsdom
var navigator = { userAgent: "node-js" };
var jQuery = require("./node-jquery").jQueryInit(window, navigator);
4 Comments
npm install jquery --save #note ALL LOWERCASE
npm install jsdom --save
const jsdom = require("jsdom");
const dom = new jsdom.JSDOM(`<!DOCTYPE html>`);
var $ = require("jquery")(dom.window);
$.getJSON('https://api.github.com/users/nhambayi',function(data) {
console.log(data);
});
1 Comment
jQuery module can be installed using:
npm install jquery
Example:
var $ = require('jquery');
var http = require('http');
var options = {
host: 'jquery.com',
port: 80,
path: '/'
};
var html = '';
http.get(options, function(res) {
res.on('data', function(data) {
// collect the data chunks to the variable named "html"
html += data;
}).on('end', function() {
// the whole of webpage data has been collected. parsing time!
var title = $(html).find('title').text();
console.log(title);
});
});
References of jQuery in Node.js** :
2 Comments
You have to get the window using the new JSDOM API.
const jsdom = require("jsdom");
const { window } = new jsdom.JSDOM(`...`);
var $ = require("jquery")(window);
1 Comment
...) should be .JSDOM("<!DOCTYPE html>") for HTML5 support?First of all install it
npm install jquery -S
After installing it, you can use it as below
import $ from 'jquery';
window.jQuery = window.$ = $;
$(selector).hide();
You can check out a full tutorial that I wrote here: https://medium.com/fbdevclagos/how-to-use-jquery-on-node-df731bd6abc7
Comments
WARNING
This solution, as mentioned by Golo Roden is not correct. It is just a quick fix to help people to have their actual jQuery code running using a Node app structure, but it's not Node philosophy because the jQuery is still running on the client side instead of on the server side. I'm sorry for giving a wrong answer.
You can also render Jade with node and put your jQuery code inside. Here is the code of the jade file:
!!! 5
html(lang="en")
head
title Holamundo!
script(type='text/javascript', src='http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.9.1.js')
body
h1#headTitle Hello, World
p#content This is an example of Jade.
script
$('#headTitle').click(function() {
$(this).hide();
});
$('#content').click(function() {
$(this).hide();
});
Comments
The module jsdom is a great tool. But if you want to evaluate entire pages and do some funky stuff on them server side I suggest running them in their own context:
vm.runInContext
So things like require / CommonJS on site will not blow your Node process itself.
You can find documentation here. Cheers!
Comments
As of jsdom v10, .env() function is deprecated. I did it like below after trying a lot of things to require jquery:
var jsdom = require('jsdom');
const { JSDOM } = jsdom;
const { window } = new JSDOM();
const { document } = (new JSDOM('')).window;
global.document = document;
var $ = jQuery = require('jquery')(window);
Hope this helps you or anyone who has been facing these types of issues.
3 Comments
TypeError: JSDOM is not a constructor$.each. I just included these lines and then did it like below: $.each(errors, function (ind,error) { res.send(error.msg);console.log(error.msg); }); Hope this helps !!Yes, jQuery can be used with Node.js.
Steps to include jQuery in node project:-
npm i jquery --save
Include jquery in codes
import jQuery from 'jquery';
const $ = jQuery;
I do use jquery in node.js projects all the time specifically in the chrome extension's project.
e.g. https://github.com/fxnoob/gesture-control-chrome-extension/blob/master/src/default_plugins/tab.js
Comments
I did it manually easy way without any additional packages or code.
npm i jquery
then I copy the jquery.min.js file from node_modules/jquery/dist directory to public/js
<script type='text/javascript' src='/js/jquery.min.js'></script>
<script>
$(document).ready(function() { console.log( "ready!" ); });
</script>
And it will work. TEST IT
Note copy/pasting the file is not the ideal thing, you could enable the file as a static file by enabling it as a static so expressJS could read it. But it is easier for me to just copy it to the static public directory.
Comments
No. It's going to be quite a big effort to port a browser environment to node.
Another approach, that I'm currently investigating for unit testing, is to create "Mock" version of jQuery that provides callbacks whenever a selector is called.
This way you could unit test your jQuery plugins without actually having a DOM. You'll still have to test in real browsers to see if your code works in the wild, but if you discover browser specific issues, you can easily "mock" those in your unit tests as well.
I'll push something to github.com/felixge once it's ready to show.
1 Comment
You can use Electron, it allows hybrid browserjs and nodejs.
Before, I tried to use canvas2d in nodejs, but finally I gave up. It's not supported by nodejs default, and too hard to install it (many many ... dependeces). Until I use Electron, I can easily use all my previous browserjs code, even WebGL, and pass the result value(eg. result base64 image data) to nodejs code.
Comments
Not that I know of. The DOM is a client side thing (jQuery doesn't parse the HTML, but the DOM).
Here are some current Node.js projects:
https://github.com/ry/node/wiki (https://github.com/nodejs/node)
And SimonW's djangode is pretty damn cool...
3 Comments
An alternative is to use Underscore.js. It should provide what you might have wanted server-side from JQuery.