Insights from Half a Decade in Web Data Extraction

Other Questions Headless Browser
1

I’ve been doing web data extraction for five years now. It’s been quite a journey! Here’s what I’ve learned:

  1. Websites are getting smarter about blocking bots. I had to start using fancy browser setups and IP switching to get around this.

  2. Things break a lot. Like, every week. I’m always fixing scrapers because websites change so often.

  3. It eats up a ton of computer power. Especially when you need to handle JavaScript stuff.

  4. The rules about what you can and can’t scrape are pretty fuzzy.

But I’ve found some good tricks too:

  • Using different internet addresses helps a lot
  • Building scrapers in pieces makes them easier to fix
  • Checking my data every day helps catch problems early
  • Saving stuff so I don’t have to keep asking the website for the same info

What about you guys? Any cool tricks you’ve figured out for web scraping? What problems have you run into?

2

I’ve found that staying up-to-date with the latest technologies is crucial in this field. Recently, I’ve been experimenting with cloud-based scraping solutions. They’ve significantly reduced my infrastructure headaches and improved scalability. Also, I’ve started using natural language processing to extract structured data from unstructured text, which has opened up new possibilities for data analysis. One challenge I’m still grappling with is handling sites with complex authentication systems. Have you found any effective strategies for dealing with those? It’s an area where I’m always looking to improve my approach.

3

yeah man, i’ve been there too. one thing that really helped me was using headless browsers like puppeteer. it’s a game changer for those javascript-heavy sites. also, rotating user agents and adding random delays between requests can trick some of those pesky bot detectors. what kinda sites you scraping?

4

I feel you on those challenges, mate. Been there, done that. One thing that’s been a game-changer for me is using distributed scraping systems. It’s like having a whole army of scrapers working for you!

I set up a Scrapy-Redis system and it’s been brilliant for handling those massive datasets without breaking a sweat. Plus, it’s dead easy to scale up when you need to.

Another lifesaver has been intercepting network requests for those tricky AJAX-heavy sites. It’s like peeking behind the curtain - you get the data straight from the source without all the faffing about with rendered content.

Oh, and don’t get me started on the legal stuff. I’ve learned the hard way to always check the robots.txt and terms of service. Better safe than sorry, right?

What’s your take on cloud-based scraping? I’ve been thinking about giving it a go to cut down on infrastructure headaches. Any recommendations?