Web scraping in R through Google playstore

Question

I want to scrape data from google play store of several app's review in which i want.

1. name field

2. How much star they got

3. review they wrote

This is the snap of the senerio

#Loading the rvest package
library('rvest')

#Specifying the url for desired website to be scrapped
url <- 'https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.phonegap.rxpal&hl=en_IN'

#Reading the HTML code from the website
webpage <- read_html(url)

#Using CSS gradient_Selector to scrap the name section
Name_data_html <- html_nodes(webpage,'.kx8XBd .X43Kjb')

#Converting the Name data to text
Name_data <- html_text(Name_data_html)

#Look at the Name
head(Name_data)

but it result to

> head(Name_data)

character(0)

later I try to discover more i found Name_data_html has

> Name_data_html
{xml_nodeset (0)}

I am new to web scraping can any help me out with this!

Answer 1

You should use Xpaths to select the object on the web page :

#Loading the rvest package
library('rvest')
#Specifying the url for desired website to be scrapped
url <- 'https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.phonegap.rxpal&hl=en_IN'
#Reading the HTML code from the website
webpage <- read_html(url)
# Using Xpath
Name_data_html <- webpage %>% html_nodes(xpath='/html/body/div[1]/div[4]/c-wiz/div/div[2]/div/div[1]/div/c-wiz[1]/c-wiz[1]/div/div[2]/div/div[1]/c-wiz[1]/h1/span')
#Converting the Name data to text
Name_data <- html_text(Name_data_html)
#Look at the Name
head(Name_data)

See how to get the path in this picture :

Answer 2

After analyzing your code and the source page of the URL you posted, I think that the reason you are unable to scrap anything is because the content is being generated dynamically so rvest cannot get it right.

Here is my solution:

#Loading the rvest package
library(rvest)
library(magrittr) # for the '%>%' pipe symbols
library(RSelenium) # to get the loaded html of 

#Specifying the url for desired website to be scrapped
url <- 'https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.phonegap.rxpal&hl=en_IN'

# starting local RSelenium (this is the only way to start RSelenium that is working for me atm)
selCommand <- wdman::selenium(jvmargs = c("-Dwebdriver.chrome.verboseLogging=true"), retcommand = TRUE)
shell(selCommand, wait = FALSE, minimized = TRUE)
remDr <- remoteDriver(port = 4567L, browserName = "chrome")
remDr$open()

# go to website
remDr$navigate(url)

# get page source and save it as an html object with rvest
html_obj <- remDr$getPageSource(header = TRUE)[[1]] %>% read_html()

# 1) name field (assuming that with 'name' you refer to the name of the reviewer)
names <- html_obj %>% html_nodes(".kx8XBd .X43Kjb") %>% html_text()

# 2) How much star they got 
stars <- html_obj %>% html_nodes(".kx8XBd .nt2C1d [role='img']") %>% html_attr("aria-label")

# 3) review they wrote
reviews <- html_obj %>% html_nodes(".UD7Dzf") %>% html_text()

# create the df with all the info
review_data <- data.frame(names = names, stars = stars, reviews = reviews, stringsAsFactors = F)

In my solution, I'm using RSelenium, which is able to load the webpage as if you were navigating to it (instead of just downloading it like rvest). This way, all the dynamically-generated content is loaded and when is loaded, you can now retrieve it with rvest and scrap it.

If you have any doubts about my solution, just tell me!

Hope it helped!