Is it possible to intercept network requests with Puppeteer-Sharp?

Yes, it is possible to intercept network requests with Puppeteer-Sharp, which is the .NET port of the Node library Puppeteer. By intercepting network requests, you can modify the requests before they are sent, analyze them, or even block certain requests from being made.

To intercept network requests in Puppeteer-Sharp, you need to use the Page.SetRequestInterceptionAsync method to enable request interception, and then attach an event handler to the Page.Request event to process the intercepted requests.

Here is an example of how to intercept network requests with Puppeteer-Sharp:

using System;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using PuppeteerSharp;

class Program
{
    public static async Task Main(string[] args)
    {
        // Setup Puppeteer to use the installed browser (or you can specify the path manually)
        await new BrowserFetcher().DownloadAsync(BrowserFetcher.DefaultRevision);

        // Launch the browser
        var browser = await Puppeteer.LaunchAsync(new LaunchOptions
        {
            Headless = true // change to false if you want to see the browser
        });

        // Create a new page
        var page = await browser.NewPageAsync();

        // Enable request interception
        await page.SetRequestInterceptionAsync(true);

        // Add an event listener to intercept requests
        page.Request += async (sender, e) =>
        {
            // Here you can check for specific requests and block them
            if (e.Request.Url.Contains("image"))
            {
                // Block the request
                await e.Request.AbortAsync();
            }
            else
            {
                // Allow the request to continue
                await e.Request.ContinueAsync();
            }
        };

        // Navigate to a website
        await page.GoToAsync("http://example.com");

        // Do whatever you need to do with the page...

        // Close the browser
        await browser.CloseAsync();
    }
}

In the example above, we set up Puppeteer-Sharp and create a new browser instance. We then enable request interception for a new page and define a request event handler. Inside the handler, we check if the request URL contains the word "image" and, if so, we block the request using Request.AbortAsync(). Otherwise, we allow the request to continue with Request.ContinueAsync().

Request interception is useful for a variety of purposes, such as:

• Blocking images, stylesheets, or other resources to speed up page loading for scraping purposes.
• Modifying request headers or post data before the request is sent.
• Capturing request data for analysis.

Remember that when you enable request interception, you must either call Request.ContinueAsync() or Request.AbortAsync() for each request; otherwise, the request will hang indefinitely.