Can I use GoQuery to scrape JavaScript-generated content?

GoQuery is a package for the Go programming language that allows you to scrape and manipulate HTML documents in a manner similar to jQuery. However, GoQuery works with static HTML content and does not have the capability to execute or parse JavaScript. This means that if you're dealing with a webpage where the content is dynamically generated with JavaScript, GoQuery alone will not be able to scrape this content as it would not be present in the initial HTML page source.

To scrape JavaScript-generated content with Go, you would typically need to use a headless browser that can interpret JavaScript and render the webpage just like a standard web browser. Tools like chromedp, rod, or Ferret can be used for this purpose. These tools are able to control a headless version of Google Chrome or other web browsers, which means they can access content rendered by JavaScript.

Here's a simple example of how you might use chromedp to scrape JavaScript-generated content in Go:

package main

import (
    "context"
    "fmt"
    "log"
    "time"

    "github.com/chromedp/chromedp"
)

func main() {
    // Create a new context
    ctx, cancel := chromedp.NewContext(context.Background())
    defer cancel()

    // Run a series of tasks with a timeout
    ctx, cancel = context.WithTimeout(ctx, 15*time.Second)
    defer cancel()

    var renderedContent string
    err := chromedp.Run(ctx,
        chromedp.Navigate(`https://example.com`), // Replace with the URL of the page you want to scrape
        // Wait for the element that is dynamically generated to be visible
        chromedp.WaitVisible(`#dynamic-content`, chromedp.ByID),
        // Get the outerHTML of the entire rendered page
        chromedp.OuterHTML("html", &renderedContent),
    )
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }

    fmt.Println(renderedContent)
}

In this example, chromedp navigates to the given URL, waits for a dynamically generated element with the ID dynamic-content to become visible, and then captures the entire HTML of the page, which includes JavaScript-generated content.

After you have obtained the HTML of the rendered page, you can then use GoQuery to parse and manipulate it as needed.

Keep in mind that using a headless browser is more resource-intensive than a simple HTTP request, and it might also be detectable by some websites. Additionally, you should always respect the terms of service of the website you are scraping and ensure that your actions are legal.