Using curl-impersonate in Node.js to avoid blocks

1

Playwright

If you are an expert in Node.js web automation, you might assume that using headless browsers controlled by technologies like Playwright or Puppeteer is more effective than utilizing curl-impersonate. No surprise, those two libraries are listed in our list of the best Node.js web scraping technologies. After all, browser automation tools also enable you to interact with the elements on the page. However, curl-impersonate is just an HTTP client that can only retrieve web pages. Still, there are Node.js web automation scenarios where a library like node-curl-impersonate might be a better choice than Playwright or Puppeteer. The reason for this is that anti-bot systems often use a two-step approach to detect and block bots. The first step checks if the request is coming from a legitimate browser, as explained earlier in this article. If the request seems suspicious, it is blocked. Otherwise, the server delivers the HTML document of the page. The page includes special JavaScript scripts that inspect the browser's settings and configurations to generate a browser fingerprint. This is then sent back to the anti-bot system to determine whether the user is legitimate. The second step works because automation tools tend to configure browsers in ways that differ from regular browsers. These differences are enough for anti-bot solutions to understand that they are dealing with an automated request. For more information, check out our guide on Playwright Extra. In contrast, curl-impersonate cannot render JavaScript, skipping the second step entirely. If the second step is not required to be considered a legitimate user, node-curl-impersonate can continue to effectively send requests to the target server without resource overheads and slowness typical of headless browsers — even in headles mode.

#Development #Tool #Browser Testing 282 social mentions

2

Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)

Note: node-curl-impersonate is only compatible with Unix-based operating systems like Linux and macOS. If you are on Windows and cannot use the WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux), consider using [ts-curl-impersonate](https://www.npmjs.com/package/ts-curl-impersonate) as an alternative as it comes with native Windows support.

#Web And Application Servers #Web Servers #Development Tools 125 social mentions

Const curlImpersonate = new CurlImpersonate(undefined, { method: "GET", impersonate: "chrome-116", headers: {}, }); CurlImpersonate.makeRequest("https://example.com") // ... // curlImpersonate.makeRequest(...).

4

cURL

Curl-impersonate is a specialized build of curl that can impersonate real-world browsers. Unlike standard curl, it adjusts request headers, TLS fingerprints, and other parameters to make its requests closely resemble those from browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

#API Tools #Developer Tools #APIs 123 social mentions