Can I use Symfony Panther for both web scraping and testing?

Yes, you can use Symfony's Panther for both web scraping and automated testing of web applications. Panther is a browser testing and web scraping library for PHP that leverages the WebDriver protocol. It provides an API to control real browsers (such as Google Chrome and Firefox) as well as the PHP native web server to simulate requests and retrieve contents from web pages.

Web Scraping with Symfony Panther

To use Symfony Panther for web scraping, you can navigate to web pages, interact with the DOM, and extract the data you need. Here's a basic example of how to use Panther for web scraping:

use Symfony\Component\Panther\PantherTestCase;

class MyScrapingTest extends PantherTestCase
{
    public function testScrapeWebsite()
    {
        $client = static::createPantherClient(); // This starts the browser and the PHP web server
        $crawler = $client->request('GET', 'https://example.com');

        // Now you can use the crawler to navigate the DOM and extract data
        $pageTitle = $crawler->filter('title')->text();
        $links = $crawler->filter('a')->links();

        foreach ($links as $link) {
            // Do something with the link
            echo $link->getURI() . "\n";
        }

        // You can even interact with the page, fill forms, click buttons, etc.
        // $client->submitForm('Sign In', ['_username' => 'user', '_password' => 'password']);

        // ... more scraping logic
    }
}

To run the code above, you would need to install Panther via Composer:

composer require symfony/panther

Automated Testing with Symfony Panther

Symfony Panther is also designed for testing web applications. It provides a set of tools that allow you to simulate user interactions and test how your application responds. Here's an example of automated browser testing with Panther:

use Symfony\Component\Panther\PantherTestCase;

class MyWebAppTest extends PantherTestCase
{
    public function testPageTitle()
    {
        $client = static::createPantherClient(); // This starts the browser and the PHP web server
        $crawler = $client->request('GET', 'https://example.com');

        // Assert the page title is correct
        $this->assertContains('Expected Title', $crawler->filter('title')->text());

        // Perform actions like clicking a link
        $link = $crawler->selectLink('Some Link')->link();
        $client->click($link);

        // Assert the current URL is as expected after clicking the link
        $this->assertEquals('https://example.com/some-page', $client->getCurrentURL());

        // ... more testing logic
    }
}

Running tests would typically be done as part of your PHP project's test suite, often using PHPUnit:

./vendor/bin/phpunit tests/MyWebAppTest.php

In both scenarios, Panther interacts with your browser in a way that simulates real user behavior, which makes it an effective tool for both scraping and testing.

Please note that while web scraping can be a powerful technique to collect data from the web, it's important to always respect the terms of service of the website you're scraping and the legal regulations regarding data privacy and copyright.