Intercepting TikTok API Requests with Puppeteer: A Practical Guide

When working with websites that have complex API structures, sometimes traditional web scraping methods fall short. TikTok is a perfect example of this scenario, where direct API requests can be challenging to reverse engineer across different profiles. However, using Puppeteer offers an elegant solution to this problem.

TikTok’s ‘item list’ API request contains all videos from a user’s profile with comprehensive metadata. While attempting to replicate these requests directly often fails when switching between profiles, Puppeteer provides a reliable workaround.

Why Intercept Network Requests?

Intercepting network requests with Puppeteer allows us to capture the data already formatted by the API instead of parsing HTML elements manually. This approach gives us access to properly structured JSON data with all the information we need in a single operation.

Setting Up Request Interception

The implementation is surprisingly straightforward. Here’s how to set up the interception:

First, we create a listener for the page responses:

<code>page.on('response', async (res) => {
  const url = res.url();
  
  // Filter only the relevant API requests
  if (url.includes('item_list')) {
    const text = await res.text();
    const jsonRes = JSON.parse(text);
    
    // Store the response
    if (jsonRes) {
      responses.push(jsonRes);
    }
  }
});</code>

Handling TikTok’s Anti-Scraping Measures

When initially navigating to a TikTok profile, you might encounter an error. Interestingly, simply clicking the ‘refresh’ button resolves this issue. We can automate this process with Puppeteer:

<code>// Get all buttons on the page
const buttons = await page.$$('button');

// Find and click the refresh button
for (const button of buttons) {
  const text = await button.evaluate(el => el.textContent);
  if (text === 'refresh') {
    await button.click();
    break;
  }
}</code>

Loading More Content

To ensure we capture all videos, we need to scroll down the page:

<code>// Wait for content to load
await page.waitForTimeout(3000);

// Scroll to load more videos
await page.evaluate(() => {
  window.scrollTo(0, document.body.scrollHeight);
});</code>

The Results

After running this script, you’ll have a comprehensive JSON file containing all the video data from the profile. The resulting file includes extensive metadata for each video, all neatly organized and ready for processing.

Conclusion

While direct API interaction is often preferable for web scraping, some scenarios require browser automation. In these cases, intercepting network requests with Puppeteer provides an efficient compromise – you get the structured data from the API without having to reverse-engineer the authentication and request parameters.

This approach works particularly well for TikTok profiles, but the same technique can be applied to many other websites with complex API structures or anti-scraping measures.