Web scraping - how to access content rendered in JavaScript via Angular.js?

Question

I'm trying to scrape data from the public site asx.com.au

The page http://www.asx.com.au/asx/research/company.do#!/ACB/details contains a div with class 'view-content', which has the information I need:

But when I try to view this page via Python's urllib2.urlopen that div is empty:

import urllib2
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

url = 'http://www.asx.com.au/asx/research/company.do#!/ACB/details'
page = urllib2.urlopen(url).read()
soup = BeautifulSoup(page, "html.parser")
contentDiv = soup.find("div", {"class": "view-content"})
print(contentDiv)

# the results is an empty div:
# <div class="view-content" ui-view=""></div>

Is it possible to access the contents of that div programmatically?

Edit: as per the comment it appears that the content is rendered via Angular.js. Is it possible to trigger the rendering of that content via Python?

Answer 1

This page use JavaScript to read data from server and fill page.

I see you use developer tools in Chrome - see in tab Network on XHR or JS requests.

I found this url:

http://data.asx.com.au/data/1/company/ACB?fields=primary_share,latest_annual_reports,last_dividend,primary_share.indices&callback=angular.callbacks._0

This url gives all data almost in JSON format

But if you use this link without &callback=angular.callbacks._0 then you get data in pure JSON format and you will could use json module to convert it to python dictionary.

---

EDIT: working code

import urllib2
import json

# new url      
url = 'http://data.asx.com.au/data/1/company/ACB?fields=primary_share,latest_annual_reports,last_dividend,primary_share.indices'

# read all data
page = urllib2.urlopen(url).read()

# convert json text to python dictionary
data = json.loads(page)

print(data['principal_activities'])

Output:

Mineral exploration in Botswana, China and Australia.

---

EDIT (2020.12.23)

This answer is almost 5 years old and was created for Python2. Now in Python3 it would need urllib.request.urlopen() or requests.get() but real problem is that for 5 years this page changed structure and technologie. Urls (in question and answer) don't exists any more. This page would need new analyze and new method.

In question was url

http://www.asx.com.au/asx/research/company.do#!/ACB/details

but currently page uses url

https://www2.asx.com.au/markets/company/acb

And it use different urls for AJAX,XHR

https://asx.api.markitdigital.com/asx-research/1.0/companies/acb/about
https://asx.api.markitdigital.com/asx-research/1.0/companies/acb/announcements
https://asx.api.markitdigital.com/asx-research/1.0/companies/acb/key-statistics
etc.

You can find more urls using DevTools in Chrome/Firefox (tab: Network, filter: XHR)

import urllib.request
import json

# new url      
url = 'https://asx.api.markitdigital.com/asx-research/1.0/companies/acb/about'

# read all data
page = urllib.request.urlopen(url).read()

# convert json text to python dictionary
data = json.loads(page)

print(data['data']['description'])

Output:

Minerals exploration & development