How do I scrape data from a web page that refreshes after submitting data via selenium and python?

Question

I'm developing a geolocation web-scraper with python and selenium. When I enter data in this website, the page refreshes (with the same URL) and when I try to get the data from the latitude and longitude input it prints nothing.

Here's the sample output, it returns an empty string

I did notice that the value tag changes after entering data in

<input id="place" name="place" type="text" placeholder="Type a place name" class="width70" style="text-transform:capitalize;" value="" required="">

Should I manipulate that? Thank you :)

Here's my code:

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
import time

counter = 0

locations = [

    'Republic of the Philippines',
    'Heaven',
    'Philippines',
]

latitude = []
longtitude = []

browser = webdriver.Chrome('C://Users/user1/Portable Python 3.7.0     x64/App/Python/Lib/site-packages/chromedriver')

url = 'https://www.latlong.net/'

for i in locations:

    browser.get(url)
    bar = browser.find_element_by_id('place')
    bar.send_keys(i)
    bar.send_keys(Keys.ENTER)
    time.sleep(3)
    lat = browser.find_element_by_id('lat')
    lng = browser.find_element_by_id('lng')

    time.sleep(3)

    latitude.append(lat.text)
    longtitude.append(lng.text)

    print(latitude[counter])
    print(longtitude[counter])

    counter+=1

    browser.refresh()

QHarr · Answer 1 · 2019-04-15T12:53:22.930

You can do a POST request

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup as bs
import re

url = 'https://www.latlong.net/'
locations = ['Republic of the Philippines', 'Heaven', 'Philippines']
latitude = []
longitude = []

with requests.Session() as sess:

    for i in locations: 
        r = sess.get(url)
        soup = bs(r.content, 'lxml')
        token = soup.select_one('#lltoken')['value']
        data = { 'place': i, 'lltoken': token }
        r = sess.post(url, data = data)
        s = r.text

        try:
            lat_lon = re.findall( r'sm\((-?\d+\.\d+),(-?\d+\.\d+)', s)[0]
            lat = lat_lon[0]
            lon = lat_lon[1]
            latitude.append(lat)
            longitude.append(lon)
        except:
            print(s)

print(latitude)
print(longitude)

Selenium:

You can grab them from the src of the map iframe. There doesn't appear to be a need for wait conditions but you may need to consider adding those (or I will happily add to show you)

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
import re

locations = [  
    'Republic of the Philippines',
    'Heaven',
    'Philippines',
]

latitude = []
longitude = []

url = 'https://www.latlong.net/'

browser = webdriver.Chrome()
browser.get(url)

for i in locations:
    bar = browser.find_element_by_id('place')
    bar.clear()
    bar.send_keys(i)
    bar.send_keys(Keys.ENTER)
    s = browser.find_element_by_id('latlongmape').get_attribute('src')
    lat_lon = re.findall( r'(-?\d+\.\d+)', s)
    lat = lat_lon[0]
    lon = lat_lon[1]
    latitude.append(lat)
    longitude.append(lon)

print(latitude)
print(longitude)
browser.quit()

Wait conditions using a different element to source:

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
import re
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC

locations = [

    'Republic of the Philippines',
    'Heaven',
    'Philippines',
]

latitude = []
longitude = []

url = 'https://www.latlong.net/'

browser = webdriver.Chrome()
browser.get(url)

for i in locations:
    bar = WebDriverWait(browser,5).until(EC.presence_of_element_located((By.ID, "place")))
    bar.clear()
    bar.send_keys(i)
    bar.send_keys(Keys.ENTER)
    s = WebDriverWait(browser,5).until(EC.presence_of_element_located((By.ID, "coordinateslink"))).text
    lat_lon = re.findall( r'(-?\d+\.\d+)', s)
    lat = lat_lon[0]
    lon = lat_lon[1]
    latitude.append(lat)
    longitude.append(lon)

print(latitude)
print(longitude)
browser.quit()

You could also use javascript to return the values:

lat = browser.execute_script("return document.getElementById('lat').value;")
lon = browser.execute_script("return document.getElementById('lng').value;")

You can also regex from where in one of the script tags:

lat_lon = re.findall( r'sm\((-?\d+\.\d+),(-?\d+\.\d+)', browser.page_source)[0]
lat = lat_lon[0]
lon = lat_lon[1]
print(lat, lon)

Places where values found:

You can see all the different places where javascript is assigning the co-ordinate values in the script that has the following js:

<script>
var mymap = L.map('latlongmap');
var mmr = L.marker([0,0]);
mmr.bindPopup('0,0');
mmr.addTo(mymap);
L.tileLayer('https://{s}.tile.openstreetmap.org/{z}/{x}/{y}.png?{foo}', {foo: 'bar',
attribution:'&copy; <a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright">OpenStreetMap</a>'}).addTo(mymap);

mymap.on('click', onMapClick);

sm(14.693390,121.067238,12)
function isll(num) {
var val = parseFloat(num);
if (!isNaN(val) && val <= 90 && val >= -90)
    return true;
else
    return false;
}

function onMapClick(e) {
mmr.setLatLng(e.latlng);
setui(e.latlng.lat,e.latlng.lng,mymap.getZoom());
}

function dec2dms(e,t) {
document.getElementById("dms-lat").innerHTML = getdms(e, !0), document.getElementById("dms-lng").innerHTML = getdms(t, !1)
}
function getdms(e, t) {
var n = 0, m = 0, l = 0, a = "X";
return a = t && 0 > e ? "S" : !t && 0 > e ? "W" : t ? "N" : "E", d = Math.abs(e), n = Math.floor(d), l = 3600 * (d - n), m = Math.floor(l / 60), l = Math.round(1e4 * (l - 60 * m)) / 1e4, n + "&deg; " + m + "' " + l + "'' " + a
}

function sm(lt,ln,zm) {
    setui(lt,ln,zm);
    mmr.setLatLng(L.latLng(lt,ln));
    mymap.setView([lt,ln], zm);
}

function setui(lt,ln,zm) {
    lt = Number(lt).toFixed(6);
    ln = Number(ln).toFixed(6);
mmr.setPopupContent(lt + ',' + ln).openPopup();
document.getElementById("lat").value=lt;
document.getElementById("lng").value=ln;
document.getElementById("latlngspan").innerHTML ="(" + lt + ", " + ln + ")"; 
document.getElementById("coordinatesurl").value = "https://www.latlong.net/c/?lat=" + lt + "&long=" + ln;
document.getElementById("coordinateslink").innerHTML = '&lt;a href="https://www.latlong.net/c/?lat=' + lt + "&amp;long=" + ln + '" target="_blank"&gt;(' + lt + ", " + ln + ")&lt;/a&gt;";
dec2dms(lt,ln);
document.getElementById('latlongmape').src='https://www.google.com/maps/embed/v1/view?key=AIzaSyALrSTy6NpqdhIOUs3IQMfvjh71td2suzY&maptype=satellite&'+'center='+lt+','+ ln+'&zoom='+zm;
}
       
</script>

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 15 '19 at 10:14

The problem is that if you check the element after sending the Keys.ENTER, there's no text to be read. It somehow uses a different technology to replace the "placeholder"

<div class="col-6 m2">
   <label for="lat">Latitude</label>
   <input type="text" name="lat" id="lat" placeholder="lat coordinate">
</div>

What you could do on the other hand is, find element id "latlngspan". That's below the map and there are both parameters - lat and long and you could perform a few simple string operations on it to get the format you need.

Would that work for you?

Thank you so much. I ended up using the "latlngspan" element and then performing some string split to get the results. Will still definitely try the other solutions in this thread — Nacho Ordinary Cheese, Apr 24 '19 at 01:52

How do I scrape data from a web page that refreshes after submitting data via selenium and python?

2 Answers2