dougwithseismic/definitely-not-a-robot 🤖

Be a human pretending to be a robot being a human robot human-being so you can do all those things that humans do, but as a robot. Or something like that ♻. This is Puppeteer but with some extra human imperfections baked in.

definitely-not-a-robot is a super simple wrapper around the Puppeteer browser that emulates human-like interactions for automation testing or web scraping tasks.

By leveraging puppeteer-extra and its StealthPlugin, it offers enhanced bot detection circumvention so you can keep on scraping and stay one step ahead.

The primary goal of definitely-not-a-robot is to simulate behaviors that are indistinguishable from real human users. This is achieved by introducing randomness in various interactions, making the actions less predictable and more "human-like."

Beep Boop. I don't condone this behaviour.

Why is randomness important?

In the world of automation, predictability is often the enemy. Web servers, especially those with anti-bot measures, can easily detect repeated patterns typical of bots. By introducing randomness:

• Mimicking Human Behavior: Humans are inherently unpredictable. Randomness in delays, mouse movements, and typing speeds makes the browser actions more similar to real users.

• Evading Detection: Many modern websites employ bot detection tools. Varying the behavior reduces the risk of being flagged as a bot, especially during web scraping or automated browsing.

• Enhanced Test Scenarios: For testing purposes, unpredictable actions can simulate a broader range of user interactions, potentially uncovering more bugs or issues.

Features

Initialization

Start by creating a new instance:

import definitelyNotAHuman from 'path-to-definitely-not-a-robot'

const browser = new definitelyNotAHuman()

Launching the browser

Initialize the browser:

await browser.launch()

For custom configurations, pass the compatible puppeteer's browser launch options:

await browser.launch({
  headless: false,
  defaultViewport: { width: 1440, height: 900 }
})

Anything you can do with a regular puppeteer instance, you can do here.

Navigating to a URL

Navigate with ease:

await browser.navigate('https://www.example.com')

Human-like Mouse Movement to Elements

Move the mouse to an element in a non-linear, humanized path, then click it. To act like a human, you must first move like a human so we split our mouse movement into segments and introduce randomness into each, depending on the distance between the current and target positions.

await browser.humanMove('#my-element-id', { hesitationBeforeClick: true })

Additional movement options, like duration and steps, allow for even more varied mouse movement behaviors.

Simulating Jittery Mouse Movements

Humans rarely keep the mouse perfectly still:

await browser.jitterMouse({ jitterCount: 5 })

The jitterMouse function emulates this behavior by making small, random movements around the current position.

Typing Text with Human Nuances

Humans don't type at a constant speed:

await browser.humanType('Hello, world!', 120) // Typing at approximately 120 words per minute

The function simulates human typing patterns by varying speeds between keypresses and occasionally introducing pauses, especially after punctuations. A small delay based on the difference in ASCII values is introduced to add that more flesh-bag human-like flow.

Randomized Pauses

Humans don't operate in fixed intervals. Emulate this:

await browser.wait(1000, 5000) // Waits for a random duration between 1 and 5 seconds

Closing the browser

Cleanly close the browser post interactions:

await browser.close()

Changelog

For a list of changes, check out the Changelog.

Author

Doug withSeismic - [email protected] twitter.com/dougiesilkstone