The article discusses the author's journey in automating the collection of social media metrics, particularly from LinkedIn, due to the absence of a direct API. Emphasizing the tedious nature of manual tracking, the author explored Playwright, a browser automation tool, to simplify the process. The implementation details illustrate using Playwright with Python to log into LinkedIn, navigate to the dashboard, and extract metrics. The author underscores the importance of choosing the right technology stack for efficient automations and the effectiveness of Playwright beyond its primary use case of testing.
The primary challenge in tracking social media metrics is the lack of HTTP API access for certain platforms, which necessitates manual scraping or automation tools.
Playwright, primarily an end-to-end testing solution, can also be effectively leveraged for tasks like automating metric scraping from websites without direct API support.
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