google-reviews-web-scraper NPM question

Ask the community
,
1

I’m trying to use this NPM, which is approved for use, to grab Google reviews.

I’ve installed it and written a JSW to buffer it from a front end call. I also installed the NPMs for Express & Puppeteer also. Very simple test:

Console.log “Yo” from the page code.
Call the buffer function.
Console.log “Shmo” from the JSW…I’m not even trying to call the NPM function itself…my import statement is what is failing.

Page code:

import { interfaceToReviews } from 'backend/GoogleReviewsBuffer'

$w.onReady(async function () {
	console.log("Yo")
	interfaceToReviews()
	//let reviews = await getReviews("https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tour+Eiffel/@48.8583736,2.292298,17z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x47e66e2964e34e2d:0x8ddca9ee380ef7e0!8m2!3d48.8583701!4d2.2944813");
	//console.log(reviews)
});

JSW code:

import { getReviews } from 'google-reviews-web-scraper';

export function interfaceToReviews() {
   console.log("Shmo")
}

I get a Yo on the log but the JSW fails with an error:
“[“Error loading web module backend/GoogleReviewsBuffer.jsw: Cannot find module ‘/dynamic-modules/third-party-npm/07569248/WC_BEGIN/google-reviews-web-scraper/1.0.2/WC_END/google-reviews-web-scraper/getReviews.js’. Please verify that the package.json has a valid "main" entry”]”

Can anyone suggest how I diagnose the problem here?

From the reviewing the code on npm, I can’t see what’s wrong here (it’s here: google-reviews-web-scraper - npm)
Perhaps the NPM is just not functional anymore? (although I would have expected the import to work still, as it did when it was originally approved).

For ease of viewing the read.me file is here:

node-google-reviews-web-scraper

Get the reviews from any google maps business :world_map:

Contributions are highly appreciated !

npm install google-reviews-web-scraper
setup :
npm install
npm run start (launches program with nodemon)

New in 1.0.2 !

  • Set the output method of the getReviews method with an optional second argument : “json” or “object”. The default is “json”.

Description

This project aims to scrape data from the google maps business page in order to get the reviews (it’s not in the api, why google ?)

Technologies used

  • Puppeteer

  • Express

  • NodeJS (duh)

Usage

There is a webserver in there, you can run it with npm run serve, and connect to localhost:3000 to get a json response with the url in the script. However, it is WIP so the point is just to return the data.
You can also run npm run start, which will show you the eiffel tower reviews (in french, cocorico !).

Re-use the code

There is only one interesting function inside the getReviws.js file, and it’s the getReviews(url) method.

const getReviews = async (url) => {
    /**
     * Steps :
     * Open headless chrome with puppeteer
     * load the link
     * evaluate js expressions in the headless chrome instance 
     * return a slue of the interesting data.
     */
};

as it is exported, you can take this file and import the method by doing something like this :

const getReviews = require('./getReviews');

Import it with NPM

If you installed it with npm, you can do the following

const getReviews = require('google-reviews-web-scraper');

and then, calling the mod with the following args :

getReviews(url);

where url is a string. A google maps business url looks like this :

The json object returned by the api looks like this :

{
  "reviewAuthorNames": [
    "Alexandre MASSON",
    "Caroline Nédélec",
    "Romain VILCOQ"
  ],
  "dates": ["il y a 5 jours", "il y a 2 semaines", "il y a 2 semaines"],
  "ratings":[5, 5, 5],
  "reviewsContent": [
    "Magnifique et incontournable monument de la capitale française. A absolument faire lors de votre visite parisienne ! Haute de 321 mètres, cette tour de fer surplombe la région parisienne. Véritable prouesse architecturale et scientifique, …",
    "Un lieu toujours magnifique. Attention ne vous faites pas photographier de force par tous ces photographes qui traînent dans la tour et qui veulent vous vendre des photos à prix d'or. Évidemment les prix ne sont pas affichés et le tarif est …",
    "La dame de fer est l'emblème de notre capitale, le monument à visiter en priorité. \nLa vue depuis le sommet est incontournable !\nL'ascension par les escaliers est une belle expérience et permet de profiter au mieux de la structure, cependant elle est réservée aux plus sportifs. La descente est possible également 😉"
  ]
}