I’m working on an app that uses language models and I need to pull info from public web pages. I’m not sure what’s the best way to do this. Should I make my own simple tool or use a ready-made scraping service?
At first, I thought about just using GET requests to grab the content. But then I realized a lot of sites use JavaScript to show their stuff. So now I’m thinking about using something like Playwright to load the pages properly.
But I’m worried about a few things:
Will websites think I’m a bot and block me?
Do I need to figure out how to follow those robot rules?
Is this way too complicated for something that should be simple?
Has anyone dealt with this before? Any tips on whether I should just use a scraping service instead? And if so, got any good ones to recommend?
yo, ive been there. built my own scraper once, total headache. ended up using ScrapingBee, saved me tons of time. handles js rendering and proxy stuff. bit pricey but worth it if ur scraping lots. just watch out for legal stuff, some sites hate scraping. good luck man!
Having worked on similar projects, I can say that the choice between building your own tool or using a service depends on your specific needs and resources. If you’re dealing with a limited number of sites and have the time to invest, creating your own scraper can be a great learning experience. It gives you full control over the process and can be more cost-effective in the long run.
However, if you’re looking to scale quickly or deal with a wide variety of websites, a scraping service might be the better option. They often handle the complexities of JavaScript rendering, IP rotation, and adhering to robots.txt rules out of the box.
In my experience, Scrapy has been a solid framework for building custom scrapers. It’s powerful, flexible, and has a good community for support. For a ready-made solution, I’ve had success with Bright Data (formerly Luminati). They offer a wide range of features and have reliable uptime.
Regardless of your choice, always prioritize ethical scraping practices to maintain good relationships with the websites you’re extracting data from.
I’ve been down this road before, and it can definitely be a challenge. From my experience, building your own scraper can be rewarding but time-consuming. It really depends on your project’s scale and timeline.
If you’re dealing with a small number of well-structured sites, a custom solution using Playwright or Selenium might work well. You’ll have full control and can tailor it to your needs. However, for larger-scale operations, a dedicated scraping service could save you a lot of headaches.
Regarding your concerns: Yes, rate limiting is crucial to avoid blocks. Respecting robots.txt is also important for ethical scraping. As for complexity, it can snowball quickly, especially when dealing with anti-bot measures.
I ended up using ScraperAPI for a recent project. It handled a lot of the tricky parts like IP rotation and JavaScript rendering. Saved me tons of time, though it does come with a cost. Whatever route you choose, make sure to keep everything above board legally and ethically.