Blocking specific resources (css, images, videos, etc) using crawlee and playwright - node.js

Question

I'm using crawlee#3.0.3 (not released yet, from github), and I'm trying to block specific resources from loading with playwrightUtils.blockRequests (which isn't available in previous versions). When I try the code suggested in the official repo, it works as expected:
import { launchPlaywright, playwrightUtils } from 'crawlee';
const browser = await launchPlaywright();
const page = await browser.newPage();
await playwrightUtils.blockRequests(page, {
// extraUrlPatterns: ['adsbygoogle.js'],
});
await page.goto('https://cnn.com');
await page.screenshot({ path: 'cnn_no_images.png' });
await browser.close();
I can see that the images aren't loaded from the screenshot. My problem has to do with the fact that I'm using PlaywrightCrawler:
const crawler = new PlaywrightCrawler({
maxRequestsPerCrawl: 3,
async requestHandler({ page, request }) {
console.log(`Processing: ${request.url}`);
await playwrightUtils.blockRequests(page);
await page.screenshot({ path: 'cnn_no_images2.png' });
},
});
This way, I'm not able to block specific resources, and my guess is that blockRequests needs launchPlaywright to work, and I don't see a way to pass that to PlaywrightCrawler.blockRequests has been available for puppeteer, so maybe someone has tried this before.
Also, i've tried "route interception", but again, I couldn't make it work with PlaywrightCrawler.

Answer 1

you can set any listeners or code before navigation by using preNavigationHooks like this:
const crawler = new PlaywrightCrawler({
maxRequestsPerCrawl: 3,
preNavigationHooks: [async ({ page }) => {
await playwrightUtils.blockRequests(page);
}],
async requestHandler({ page, request }) {
console.log(`Processing: ${request.url}`);
await page.screenshot({ path: 'cnn_no_images2.png' });
},
});