Web scraper selector UI not displaying/working?!?

Bug Reports
#1

Chrome: Version 74.0.3729.108
WebScraper: 0.4.1
OS: Mac OS 10.14.3

Hi everyone. Kudos to the devs behind https://webscraper.io/ I've been using this amazing tool for quite a while.

Not sure if it's an actual bug but...
I started recently to have issues with some websites. I was trying to scrape www.schwab.com for example when I noticed the selector UI was not showing up. I could not select a specific DOM element without UI, or eventually see the Element or Data preview. Same thing happens now on google.com too. (i.e it seems I'm not able to scrape google results)

Does anyone know why? Anything changed recently?

Thanks in advance

EDIT:
The UI bug seems to affect just the latest Chrome Version 74.0.3729.108 can anyone confirm?

#2

Hi!

I just tested element selection on Chrome version 74 in the schwab.com site. Everything was working as expected. Is the problem in the entire site or only within some parts of the site?

You could also check whether other extensions aren't affecting the element selector. You can either disable all of the other extensions or create a new person profile (manage people) within chrome and install Web Scraper there.

If an extension is affecting the element selector then please try to find out which one is it and let us know.

#3

I tested the website schwab.com and google.com in incognito mode with no extensions enabled and I still can't see the UI.

The problem affects the entire website, I literally can't se the DOM element selector that pops up after I hit "Selector > Select" button.

I was able to scrape the websites above mentioned using the Firefox extension though. Not sure why the latest Chrome version is not working on my Mac.

#4

Having the same issues on both Mac and Windows with the latest version of both the extension and Chrome. I click "select" and the extension freezes.

Been using it for the past year, it hasn't happened in the past :wink:

#5

The website doesn't seem to matter.

#6

Also - sometimes it freezes when scraping. Maybe console errors help you debug

background_script.js:465 {"error":"[object Object]","request":"{"method":"selectSelector","params":[{"parentCSSSelector":"","allowedElements":"img"}]}","stack":"Error\n at a.error (chrome-extension://jnhgnonknehpejjnehehllkliplmbmhn/background_script.js:468:35)\n at chrome-extension://jnhgnonknehpejjnehehllkliplmbmhn/background_script.js:28373:39","timestamp":1557449871,"level_name":"ERROR","message":"Failed to send message to chrome tab"}
log @ background_script.js:465
error @ background_script.js:468
(anonymous) @ background_script.js:28373
background_script.js:465 {"error":"[object Object]","request":"{"method":"selectSelector","params":[{"parentCSSSelector":"","allowedElements":"img"}]}","stack":"Error\n at a.error (chrome-extension://jnhgnonknehpejjnehehllkliplmbmhn/background_script.js:468:35)\n at chrome-extension://jnhgnonknehpejjnehehllkliplmbmhn/background_script.js:28373:39","timestamp":1557449874,"level_name":"ERROR","message":"Failed to send message to chrome tab"}
log @ background_script.js:465
error @ background_script.js:468
(anonymous) @ background_script.js:28373

#7

froze again with a different error. Let me know if I'm being annoying, I'm just trying to help :slight_smile:

background_script.js:20594 Database has a global failure DOMException
z @ background_script.js:20594
a.onabort @ background_script.js:23024
background_script.js:19700 Uncaught (in promise) i {status: 500, name: "indexed_db_went_bad", message: "unknown", error: true, reason: "UnknownError"}error: truemessage: "unknown"name: "indexed_db_went_bad"reason: "UnknownError"status: 500__proto__: Error
s @ background_script.js:19700

#8

Did you manage to resolve this? I have the same problem!

#9

I've managed to do it without the UI. I literally took the element class from the dev inspector.
Part of the site got loaded into an iframe, that's why I think the UI selectors were not working.

EDIT: After few months, solution no longer works :frowning: Not entirely sure why

#10

Same issue again. I seem unable to scrape schwab.com .

Tested the same sitemap that works with WebScraper for Firefox but not in Google Chrome.
When running the above mentioned sitemap on Chrome, the scraping process fails and no results are shown.

I'm on MacOS 10.14.6
Chrome Version 78.0.3904.108 (Official Build) (64-bit)

#11

I may have a solution but I am not sure that it could solve your problem.
I was using adblock with Chrome and my "select" wasn't working but now that I have stopped adblock, everything seems good.

I hope it could help someone :wink:

1 Like
#12

My temporary solution -

Went to one of test scrape page in chrome extension https://webscraper.io/

I was able to get the ui to show up.

#13

I am experiencing the same issue on Chrome Version 83.0.4103.116 (Official Build) (64-bit).
I am unable to select anything and I don't see the usual on screen pop-up asking which element to select.
It was working fine 6 months ago

Possibly due to this error. Not sure.

error
error.jpg1873×166 51.2 KB

#14

The error message is : "Selector is required and cannot be empty"
Attached screenshot

cotton-error
cotton-error.jpg1274×966 119 KB

#15

This was a bug introduced in chrome 83 and fixed in chrome 84. Chrome 84 has been released already. Update your browser if it is still on chrome 83.

Official bug report:
https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1093731

#16

If anyone else is still having this issue like I was. I found removing the Web Scraper extension from my browser, and re-adding it was the only way to fix the issue. I can now see the selector window/UI again.

1 Like