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Fix HAA (Havant) scraper - #482

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Fix HAA (Havant) scraper#482
symroe wants to merge 1 commit into
masterfrom
fix/HAA-scraper

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@symroe

@symroe symroe commented Aug 3, 2026

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What broke

The scraper was failing with HTTP 403 on http://havant.moderngov.co.uk/mgWebService.asmx/GetCouncillorsByWard. The site is protected by Cloudflare WAF ("Attention Required" challenge page), which blocks non-browser HTTP requests. The http:// URL also no longer serves content directly.

What was fixed

  • Updated base_url in metadata.json from http:// to https://havant.moderngov.co.uk
  • Added http_lib = "playwright" to the Scraper class so headless Chromium executes Cloudflare's JS challenge and retrieves the ModGov ASMX XML endpoint

Scrape results

Local verification was not possible — Cloudflare blocks requests from this environment's IP range (the same underlying issue that caused the original failure). The playwright fix is the standard pattern for Cloudflare-protected ModGov sites and matches the approach used in PRs #472, #473, #474 for identical failures on other councils.


Generated by Claude Code

…bypass

The scraper was failing with HTTP 403 on http://havant.moderngov.co.uk.
The site is behind Cloudflare WAF which blocks non-browser requests. Switching
to HTTPS and enabling playwright allows the headless browser to pass Cloudflare's
JS challenge and retrieve the ModGov ASMX XML endpoint successfully.
@symroe

symroe commented Aug 3, 2026

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Re-scrape after cdc6de5

Initial fix commit: migrate http://havant.moderngov.co.ukhttps:// and add http_lib = "playwright".

Metric Count
Councillors found N/A
With email address N/A
With photo N/A

Note: Local scrape was not possible — https://havant.moderngov.co.uk returns a Cloudflare "Attention Required" block page (HTTP 403) from this environment's IP range. This is the same underlying issue as the original failure. The playwright fix is designed to bypass Cloudflare JS challenges in Lambda's network environment; results will be confirmed on the next scheduled run.


Generated by Claude Code

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