booking

Booking.com (booking.com)

Hotel/stay search results on /searchresults.html?ss=<destination>. Real Chrome via 127.0.0.1:9222 clears the CloudFront JS challenge on first nav. Cards are in the DOM (not the initial HTML), pagination is click-to-load-more, and prices are absent unless dates are in the URL.

Detection

Architecture

• /searchresults.html?ss=<q> returns a tiny shell + JS that hydrates into a React-ish SPA.
• The first paint server-renders 1 placeholder card; the rest are injected client-side.
• Initial batch is 25 cards; more load via a "Load more results" button (batches of ~25).
• A sign-in modal sometimes pops up — dismiss with [aria-label="Dismiss sign-in info."].
• Each card has a stable data-testid="property-card" wrapper with sub-testids for title, title-link, distance, review-score, price-and-discounted-price, price-for-x-nights, recommended-units, address-link.

Strategy used

• Phase 0 (curl): ❌ HTTP 202 challenge page, no data.
• Phase 1 (framework JSON): ❌ no __NEXT_DATA__, no global payload blob worth parsing.
• Phase 2 (browser): ✅ puppeteer.connect({ browserURL: "http://127.0.0.1:9222" }) — zero challenges, cards render immediately. No stealth plugin required.

Stealth config that works

import puppeteer from "puppeteer-core";
const browser = await puppeteer.connect({ browserURL: "http://127.0.0.1:9222" });
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.setViewport({ width: 1440, height: 900 });
await page.goto(url, { waitUntil: "domcontentloaded", timeout: 60000 });
// IMPORTANT: disconnect, do not close