# Screen Scraping in 2025

DevFeed: [Screen Scraping in 2025](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/screen-scraping-in-2025-11190.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://blog.ipspace.net/2025/05/screen-scraping-2025/>)

Published: 2025-05-07T09:32:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [ipSpace.net blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/ipspace-net-blog.md>)

Topics: [Structured-data](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/structured-data.md>), [JSON](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/json.md>), [XML](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/xml.md>), [Parsing](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/parsing.md>), [Python](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/python.md>)

Tags: [automation](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/automation.md>), [blog-post](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/blog-post.md>), [code](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/code.md>), [data](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/data.md>), [json](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/json.md>), [parsing](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/parsing.md>), [python](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/python.md>), [xml](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/xml.md>)

## AI overview

The article examines why screen scraping remains necessary for network devices that lack reliable JSON or XML output. It compares screen-scraped text with structured data, noting that JSON and XML can be larger and that manually generated or legacy structured output may be invalid or unavailable. It also argues that XML is generally harder to process than JSON, especially for large objects and data involving namespaces.

## Source excerpt

Dr. Tony Przygienda left a very valid (off-topic) comment to my Breaking APIs or Data Models Is a Cardinal Sin blog post: If, on the other hand, the customers would not camp for literally tens of years on regex scripts scraping screens, lots of stuff could progress much faster. He's right, particularly from Juniper's perspective; they were the first vendor to use a data-driven approach to show commands. Unfortunately, we're still not living in a perfect world: Read more ...