Hey everyone! I’m working on a big web scraping project using a headless browser. My goal is to process about 500k pages daily but the jobs come in randomly. Not sure how to handle this efficiently.
I’m thinking about two approaches:
Open and close the browser for each job. Might be slower but better for memory?
Keep one browser open all the time, just manage the tabs. Faster but could hog memory?
Anyone have experience with this kind of setup? What’s the best way to balance speed and resource use? Any tips or tricks I should know?
I’m pretty new to working with headless browsers at this scale. Really appreciate any advice on making this run smoothly in production. Thanks!
I’ve tackled similar challenges in my web scraping projects. From my experience, a hybrid approach works best. Keep a pool of browser instances open (say, 5-10) and distribute jobs among them. This balances speed and resource usage nicely.
One trick that’s been a game-changer for me: use browser contexts instead of tabs. They’re lighter on resources and easier to manage. Also, implement a ‘health check’ system to restart browsers if they become unresponsive or memory usage spikes.
Don’t forget about request throttling to avoid overwhelming target servers. I’ve found that setting dynamic delays based on server response times helps maintain a good scraping pace without getting blocked.
Lastly, consider using a headless browser like Puppeteer with stealth plugins. It’s helped me bypass many anti-bot measures. Good luck with your project!
Balancing speed and resource use is crucial when handling large-scale scraping projects. I have found that keeping the browser open and managing tabs tends to be more efficient because it reduces the overhead of continuous browser startup and shutdown. However, proper tab management is necessary to control memory usage, which can be achieved by closing tabs after a certain number of tasks. Additionally, consider parallelizing tasks with a worker pool and implementing robust error handling. These practices will help ensure smoother operations in production.
yo tom, i’ve dealt with similar stuff. keeping the browser open is way faster, but yeah memory can be an issue. maybe try a hybrid approach? keep a few browsers open and rotate through em. also, look into using a proxy rotation service to avoid ip bans. good luck with ur project man!