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Use Playwright to Bypass CAPTCHA

Ava Wilson
Ava Wilson

Expert in Web Scraping Technologies

26-Sep-2024

Website security now depends heavily on CAPTCHAs, or Completely Automated Public Turing Tests to Tell Computers and Humans Apart. When a website's security system detects unusual activity (such as a pattern of access that deviates from typical human behavior), it loads a CAPTCHA (such as reCAPTCHA, sound, or picture puzzles) to stop bots from accessing the site.

Once a CAPTCHA challenge loads, it can be quite hard to get past. There are a few ways, nevertheless, that your script may communicate with the web firewall in a more human-like manner. You may therefore totally stop CAPTCHA from loading. This is known as evading, or bypassing, a CAPTCHA.
This comprehensive guide shows you how to utilize Playwright to use Python to get around CAPTCHA issues. The advantages of utilizing Scrapeless' Captcha Solver rather than the playwright-stealth library will also be covered in the lesson.

Note: It is against the law and morality to get around CAPTCHAs for nefarious or unlawful purposes. This lesson is intended primarily for educational reasons. In order to prevent legal difficulties, we strongly advise users to read the target website's Terms of Services in its entirety.

Bypass CAPTCHA by using Playwright

Playwright offers a powerful and intuitive API for interacting with web pages, enabling developers to carry out operations like clicking components, completing forms, and obtaining data from dynamic websites. Cross-browser compatibility is guaranteed by its support for several browsers, including Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit. Furthermore, Playwright is appropriate for web scraping activities because to its headless mode capability, which enables covert browser interactions.

It might be difficult to rely only on the Playwright CAPTCHA skipping approach since websites can identify traffic coming from headless and automated programs. Thankfully, the `playwright-stealth} package is available to assist.

Playwright and the stealth package together provide a potent combination for getting around CAPTCHAs. Playwright's headless browser instances look more human to the websites thanks to the stealth package. Consequently, it lessens the likelihood of being found by the websites.

Let's create a Python script that opens a web connection in headless mode to show how to handle CAPTCHA in Playwright. After that, it takes a snapshot of the target link and stores it locally. If the snapshot displays the real content of the website rather than a CAPTCHA or reCAPTCHA box, the script has been successful.

Let's look at a step-by-step process for developing any such script and setting up the stealth using Playwright in Python.

1. Set up the necessary dependencies

Install the stealth package and the Playwright library.

language Copy
pip install playwright playwright-stealth

2. Modules for import

For a simple and linear program flow, use the Playwright library's synchronous version.

language Copy
from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright
from playwright_stealth import stealth_sync

3. Launch an instance of a headless browser.

Define the method capture_screenshot(), which contains the whole code to launch a headless browser instance, navigate to the URL, and take a screenshot. Create a new instance of sync_playwright within this method, and use it to start the Chromium browser in headless mode.

language Copy
# Define the function to capture the screenshot
def capture_screenshot():
    # Create a playwright instance
    with sync_playwright() as play_wright:
        browser = play_wright.chromium.launch(headless=True)

        # Create a new context and page
        context = browser.new_context()
        page = context.new_page()

4. Utilize the stealth configurations.

Use the playwright-stealth package to apply the stealth settings to the page and enable Playwright CAPTCHA bypasses after generating the browser context. By concealing the automatic behavior of the browsers, stealth settings assist lower the likelihood of automated access detection.

language Copy
        # Apply the stealth settings
        stealth_sync(page)

5. Open the page.

The next step is to use the goto() page function to go to the target URL by providing the appropriate URL.

language Copy
# Navigate to the website
        url = "https://www.scrapeless.com/"
        page.goto(url)

6. Grab a screen grab

After the website has fully loaded, snap a screenshot, and then exit the browser.

language Copy
        # Wait for the webpage to load completely
        page.wait_for_load_state("load")

        # Take a screenshot
        screenshot_filename = "scrapeless_screenshot.png"
        page.screenshot(path=screenshot_filename)

        # Close the browser
        browser.close()

        print("Done! You can check the screenshot...")

capture_screenshot()

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In summary

Playwright may be used to scrape content from websites with standard CAPTCHA protection when paired with the playwright-stealth package. See our blog postings for additional information on configuring Playwright with proxies, using Playwright for site scraping, and combining Playwright with Scrapy. Get a free trial of our premium proxies to help you decide which proxies best suit your needs if you're still unsure.

However, a more complex and clever bypassing solution is needed to get around CAPTCHA (such as reCAPTCHA) for websites that use sophisticated anti-bot software. In order to get over complex CAPTCHAs, Scrapeless' CAPTCHA Solver automatically integrates the newest AI approaches with bypassing tactics (such as proxies and IP rotation, establishing realistic fingerprints, and JS rendering).

At Scrapeless, we only access publicly available data while strictly complying with applicable laws, regulations, and website privacy policies. The content in this blog is for demonstration purposes only and does not involve any illegal or infringing activities. We make no guarantees and disclaim all liability for the use of information from this blog or third-party links. Before engaging in any scraping activities, consult your legal advisor and review the target website's terms of service or obtain the necessary permissions.

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