How to stop your scraper breaking when a site redesigns its HTML
CSS selectors and XPath are a bet that markup never changes. Ask for the price, not div.grid__x9 > span.ttl.
A selector like div.grid__x9 > h4.ttl describes an accident of this week's markup. Class names minify, A/B tests swap layouts, frameworks re-render the same content into a new DOM. The data — a name, a price, a rating — usually did not move.
Plainscrape does not take CSS or XPath. You describe the fields in plain language. Extraction is anchored to meaning. When a field is not on the page, it comes back empty, not a confident hallucination.
There is nothing for you to store or invalidate. Each call says what it wants; Plainscrape reuses the extraction code that worked on that site and rechecks it on every page, so a redesign triggers fresh code instead of wrong data. A follow-up question is a new request.
Longer engineering notes: Why Plainscrape?
FAQ
Plainscrape takes a plain-language instruction. There are no selectors or XPath to write or maintain. When a site redesigns its markup, the meaning of the page is what you asked for — not a class name.
Stop treating CSS/XPath as the contract. Ask for the product price, the title, the rating. Plainscrape extracts what the page says, not where the page says it.
No. Describe the data. Lists are read straight from the page: a field that is not there comes back empty.
No. You send what you want on each call, and Plainscrape keeps the extraction code that worked for a site so repeat calls are fast. A follow-up question is a new request.